However they failed to anticipate the speed at which this particular carriage was being driven. The vat completely missed the carriage but as it dropped to the hard packed earth some of the liquid exploded out with enough force to splash the carriage's retreating butt. This also Titanias failed to notice.

     It wasn't until he heard the howls that he realized something was wrong.

    From all around him, hounds hungrily bounded toward the road, mouths drooling down their hanging tongues as they chased the delectable smell enchanting their nostrils. From above him, yips and clicks sounded as apes smelt the enticing scent of the liquid that the cauldron had held. The apes swung through the canopy of the with their feet and one of their hands. In the other, they held sharpened twigs like spears and pitchforks. Though they were later in picking up the trail, they moved much faster than the acidic hounds, swinging through the branches and vines of the understory.

    It wasn't long before Titanias felt the vibration of spears striking the back and side of the vehicle he drove. Titanias could feel the thunk of the spears as they got closer and closer to the front of the vehicle. Knowing that there was a small rivulet that ran through the forest Titanias correctly surmised that he might be being chased by wuzhiqi, an ape demon who could be tricky to deal with as they could extend their arms and head to attack at range.

     “Now or never.” He thought and pushed the throttle into a higher gear. The wheels compressed and flattened, becoming oblong, all terrain reinforced tires. The mettalic hooves pointed backwards like exhaust and shot out jets of compressed air propelling the horses forward midstride. Traction enhancing spikes projected from the horses hooves allowing them to find purchase despite being lifted off the ground by the vector of the blast of air the artifacts spew.  

    The carriage sped at a speed unheard of and Titanias was thrown into the seat behind by the force of its acceleration.  

     Directly ahead of him, blocking the entire road and into the treeline, was a massive downed tree.

    “Persistent bastards, aren't they?” Titanias thought to himself. Still they had underestimated him, probably thinking him to be only a particularly skilled coachman. Titanias was the heir to the evergreen noble house and had traveled much of the country since a young child, studying curses, seals, and barrier magic with his father in an effort to break the curse that plagued his family. As a byproduct, he had become an expert in defensive magic and he would be damned if some fallen tree would cause him to fail this test.  

    He began chanting, “When matters come up, one should respond, when things come up one should discern.” It wasn't necessary when doing barrier magic for one to chant, but for sealing magic it was absolutely requisite. 

    Barrier magic consisted of using mana control to fold ambient mana in on itself to form the shape you desire and then layering that with your mana to strengthen it. The more mana you had, the stronger you could make a barrier and the more control you had the more intricate the creation could be.

    Sealing magic dealt with weaving mana like a net, leaving holes for some things and catching others. Some houses or clans who specialize in sealing magic used words while others used numbers, but the effects were generally the same. Mana acted as a type of yarn and each character of the chant would take the yarn and thread itself into a pattern, similar to crocheting a blanket.

    What Titanias was attempting to do was meld the two forms of magic into one spell. Something so complicated and requiring such fine mana control that only a wizened master or a genius would even think to attempt it. It just so happened that having been cursed to never be able to wield attacking magic had forced Titanias into one of the latter.

    A true double-edged sword.

   “Going along harmoniously,” Titanias continued. As he spoke, two things happened simultaneously. A golden light began enveloping the carriage and horses. First just a dim ethereal glow, but slowly growing in solidity and brightness as Titanias spoke. 

    “You roam in the heavens,” the horses neighed nervously, seeing the large obstruction growing closer, but they were well trained and receiving no instructions to stop from their driver they continued on their self-destructive trajectory. 

     “Then return to absorb,” The second thing that happened while Titanias was chanting is that the horse and carriage became less opaque. As if Titanias had his finger on a dimmer slowly sliding it across, the entire vehicle seemed to seep out of existence.

     Theoretically, the seal Titanias was weaving would allow the corporeal forms of the carriage and everything with it, to traverse into the spiritual realm. The trouble with going into the spiritual realm was that it was hard to get back (and extremely dangerous to take your physical form with you), so he simultaneously errected a barrier that would bounce their physical forms back into the corporeal realm, making them ethereal for only a few moments.

   If he was a moment to late they'd slam head first into the trunk of the felled tree and too early and they could wind up trapped in the middle of the trunk or lost in the other plane until some spiritual beast came and gobbled them up.

   A tricky bit of casting if there ever was one.

    The horses closed their eyes as the great tree loomed imminently. 

    “The virtues of the receptive.” Titanias finished his chant with mere inches to spare. The golden light that encompassed them solidified and their bodies phased out of existence as they collided with the insidious trap laid by the would-be thieves.