Flashback ( PDFDrive )

On the outside the tower looked like a picture-perfect ruin,
complete with crumbling walls and mossy stones and overgrown
vines. But inside it was all sticky mud and bioluminescence and slimy
membranes. The trolls were in the process of making the goopy green
mixture the babies would be floating in, and that was apparently the
last step before the hive would be ready for implantation. Which
meant Tam and Wylie needed to get to work following the
instructions Luzia had left for them on a rolled scroll tucked into the
handle of the tower’s door.
“You’re really not going to tell us who wrote these?” Wylie asked as
he scanned the surprisingly long list of steps.
“I can’t,” Sophie told him. “And if anyone asks, you have to make it
seem like you and Tam came up with the illusions yourself.”
“I doubt Lady Zillah will believe that,” Tam warned. “Half this stuff
I don’t even understand.”
“But you can do it?” Fitz asked.
Tam skimmed the list again. “Yeah, it’s just a lot of ‘send shadows
here and here and here.’ I don’t get how that’s going to create some
powerful illusion, but . . . I guess we’ll find out.”
The first several steps seemed to center on shooting alternating
beams of shadows and light at a series of small mirrors that Luzia
must’ve placed before she left. Some dotted the perimeter of the tower,
but most were scattered throughout the forest, dangling from trees,
leaning against mossy rocks, and tucked among the thick ferns.
“You two wait here,” Tarina told Sophie and Fitz, pointing to a
fallen log in a shadowy clearing. “I want to do a quick patrol of the
forest. I don’t like how thick it is. Limits my visibility.”