Sorry for the delay again; my sister's family was visiting, and writing with a four-year-old in the house was surprisingly hard.
May 10th 2026, 05:30 pm
Cassandra Morris groaned as she sat down on the stool. She was exhausted, well, and truly exhausted, not in the physical sense. She wished it had merely been the overexertion of muscle, or the buildup of lactic acid. No, her exhaustion was the kind most people would never know. The simplest Theurgic rituals took 5 minutes; that was as quick as you could make them. At least without risking offending the neighbor you were asking for a favor. Even those five minutes carried risks. She hadn't done those rituals.
Divination was by no means a simple form of witchcraft. Especially not when what you needed was for various entities to monitor the use of theurgic magic across a wide area. Twelve hours, twelve fucking hours of continuous work to get all those spells done. And not the kind of work where you could mindlessly relax at any point. No loose focus, and you fucked up. Then at best it was hours worth of migraines. At worst it was a week in a psychiatric clinic.
“Jesus Christ.” The base doctor breathed from behind her, finally taking a look at the mangled, raw mess that was her back.
“What happened? Did you get whipped or something?” He asked. “I haven't seen anything like this since Syria.”
Cassandra winced as the doctor started cleaning the wounds on her back, and to no small degree to the question itself. Of course she had gotten whipped. That wasnt worst of it; the worst of it was that she had to do it to herself. And as with most self-inflicted pain, well it didn't hurt as much as it needed to on its own. Not for her purposes.
Coating the whip in salt had solved that problem. It had hurt like a bitch, but that was the point. Some theurgic could use magical components; others needed sensation. Demons were really, really annoying. The little bastards were sadists in the literal sense, feeding on pain and suffering. If you needed to make a deal with one, it wanted pain, though magical components could sometimes substitute for that. This time it couldn't, and she wanted something expensive.
“Something like that. Does it need stitches?”
“No.” She could hear that the doctor was holding back the question he actually wanted to ask. That was for the best; the man didn't need to know.
He finished up quickly, but she stopped him before he could place the bandages over the wounds. Fishing a small bottle filled with a deep red fluid from her bag. She set her jaw as she handed it to the doctor.
“Pour it over my back, please.”
Of course it couldn't be that easy. The good doctor, reasonably enough, didn't want to pour the strange fluid over open wounds. But she did eventually convince him that everything would be fine. She couldn't tell him what was in the bottle, not before he had used it. The US had neither expertise nor the resources to make healing potions; as such, they had to be imported. It was safe to say she wasnt telling him he was holding four thousand dollars' worth of miracle in a bottle.
The sensation of skin and muscle rapidly knitting back together was painful. But even more than that, it felt hot, and she could feel the sweat bead on her back as the wounds on her back closed. Some might have considered using a potion to simply close some wounds like this wasteful, especially here. But it truly wasnt; she needed to sleep if she wanted the things she had made her deals with to tell her anything. And that wasnt happening with those wounds open.
After thanking the doctor, it didn't take her long to reach the room the colonel of Malmsrom Air Force Base had given her. The man hadn't liked it, but there was only so much he could do when the Pentagon told him to do something. It was understandable; no one liked having the weirdos who knew far too much or did far too strange things on your base. Especially not when they, like she was here, wasnt in the base commander's chain of command.
The spirits she had talked to would travel around, ask others of their kind, and then report back if they found anything. The odds of her learning about any illegal use of witchcraft, ritual witchcraft at least, when it happened was nearly zero. If you weren't on site, it was often far closer to a massive game of telephone. But it was what they had.
It took mere seconds for her to drift off to sleep as her head hit the pillow, exhaustion overcoming her nearly instantly. She really needed the sleep.
(Pov Sophia)
May 10th 2026, 05:34 PM
Sophia leaned over the two wooden segments spread out on her bed. They were large, both containing segments of the magic circle. Two circles, one within the other, one of copper and one of iron. Symbols written in runemal in mostly charcoal between the circles, and at four points in the ring they widened, providing room for large runes, ones of metal placed in grooves carved into the wood. The metal wasnt thick, and neither was the wooden board. But they didn't have to be.
It had taken her days to make.
Her breath was shaking slightly. She had had problems falling asleep last night, the sinking feeling in her gut clawing at her. She had, however, eventually gotten a good night's rest. Not enough of a problem for there to be any greater risks involved. She had spent the entire day practicing pronunciation and motion. All of it needed to be correct.
I am actually doing this.
Even as she had made the preparations, done everything in her power to learn the ritual by rote, it hadn't really set in. It was strange, months spent in wonder. An obsessive search for information that felt like it lasted forever. Then A single book, actual information. And now, barely a week later, she was actually trying it.
Glancing over at her desk, she could feel her jaw tense. The infernal device was necessary; it certainly worked. She just wished something else could have been the offering. Not anything else, mind you, as torture seemed to be… Well, it wasnt something she liked thinking about.
Getting the thing past her family had been a chore. It would have been the literal end of the world if they had seen it. She did not want to hear her mother's awkward lecture if she had seen it. Trying it out had been worse. The house didn't have thick walls, so she certainly couldn't test it here. She had eventually found a place, but it had been itchy.
Sophia let out a slow, deep breath as she picked up her things. If this worked, she would be left with a 15-foot-tall tree of ice; if it didn't, well, she really didn't know.
(Pov Jason)
May 10th 2026, 05:45 PM
The stairs squawked, the sound echoing off the walls just as Jason walked out of the kitchen towards the living room. The sound of wooden plates knocking against each other, moving quickly down the stairs.
Sophia reached the end of the stairs before he did. Carrying two large bags with her. She had been behaving strangely this week. Sneaking out at odd hours, diving deeper into her research. He hadn't said anything to their parents, of course. A little rebelion wasnt bad for her, and she was smart enough to avoid anything too stupid. She certainly wasnt going to parties. No, she had been doing something in the barn. Though he didn't know what.
“Where are you going?” He raised an eyebrow
Sophia took off her shoes, working quickly. “Out. I have stuff to do.” She was out the door before he asked anything else. Was she blushing slightly?
He shook his head before he continued into the living room. Jasmine was sitting on the couch; the TV was showing some B-flick. A decent one, just not one he could remember the name of. It was something about space and a towel. His parents weren't home, nor was his grandfather, so they had simply taken the living room. It filled his chest with a warm sensation to have her here for once. At least when it was just the two of them.
He put the tray down, the smell of tacos wafting through the room. Jasmine had gotten hungry, in the normal human way. And quite frankly, so had he. He had considered asking Sophia to join them, but she had eaten earlier, or at least come down and taken some food back up with her.
Jasmine moaned before he had even gotten to sit down. “Gods, these are good.” She winked at him, smiling a slightly lopsided smile. “You know I kinda lucked out; I was only expecting one type of fantastic food when I proposed.”
Jason laughed, a slightly awkward laugh. “Well, I didn't expect to be the literal meal more often than not. Not that I am complaining.”
He settled next to her, grabbing a taco of his own. He had to admit they were better than the ones he normally made. Still, the food couldn't distract him from the question clawing at his mind, one he had been waiting to ask for weeks. She always said gods, not god.
He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Hey Jasmine, are you religious?”
She motioned with her hand, showing that she wanted to finish chewing. He didn't have to wait long. “Yeah, I am, sort of.”
“So are you Christian, Buddhist?” His voice tapered off, the question hanging in the air.
She shook her head. “No, I follow a religion called the faith of the axis. Though I don't really worship; there isn't any point here. No holy sites, and those gods don't pay much attention here. I did before we left the old country, though. If you want to know more about some of that, though, well, ask Rhea shes the theurgist. Have you talked with her yet?”
Jason cringed. He had been meaning to, of course he had. It wasnt his fault he hadn't gotten around to it yet. “I… Haven't gotten around to it yet. I am sorry, Jasmine, it's been hard to find the time. I know it's only a message, but things have just been so hectic lately…”
She took his hand in hers, kissing the back of it, interrupting him. “Jason its fine, just do it as soon as you can, ok. Please?”
He nodded. “Yeah, of course. I will message her first thing in the morning.”
The rest of the movie was fine; the atmosphere quickly moved past the conversation. The food and the odd climax of the movie, involving mice and planet factory, made it easy not to dwell on it. Her car was parked just outside, not far from the door. The air had acquired a certain chill, a comfortable one after a surprisingly hot day.
“Yeah, tomorrow sounds great. We can get Chloe to join us.”
Jason pushed his hands deeper in his pockets. “Great, then we can go then. I promise the arcade is so much fun even if you might find it a little childish.”
She laughed a little. “I promise, Jason, I don't…” Her head snapped in the direction of the barn, staring at it like she was trying to burn a hole in the wall.
“Jasmine are…” He didn't manage to finish the sentence before Jasmine was halfway to the barn, moving faster than any human had any right to on foot. He thought she would slow down and open the old, poorly made door. She didn't; the door simply shattered into fragments as she hit it.