What Always Follows

[Valtxr]

   Money had no bearing on the ritual? Then what was the purpose of the sin tax? Aven was rich; now things were coming together. Maybe...well, so long as it didn't trouble him too terribly, all the minor details were more or less irrelevant.
   Oh. There goes the chair. And the desk.
   "Don't move my what? My feet? O-Oh. Okay then. I'll be still."
   She fidgeted.
   "Okay. Now I'll be still."
   She fidgeted again. Her lips twitched.
   "Okay. I'll stop thinking about not moving my feet. And now I'll be still."
   So she watched him construct the circles. Watched him utilize the shadowy dark matter to perfect the curvature of each one. And then—
   "Ah!"
   Nisreen flinched when Aven's shadow expanded and formed the myriad runes and intersecting lines about the silver circles. She clapped her hands over her mouth when she realized she'd moved from the flinching.
   "Sorry! Sorry, sorry. You, um, you caught me by surprise, is all. Oh, um, no. I think. Lycanthropy is, ah, werewolves and the like, correct? I think I remembered that right. So no to that one if that's the case. And I've never met any demons before, much less come in contact with their blood. In fact, I thought that when you said you needed a demon's horn that you were referring to the male reproductive—okay, actually, let's not get into that. No. No demon's blood. I've not had any abnormal or magical ordeals of any kind, save for my encounter with Xerrat and resulting condition. I hope that's a good thing for this."

[Wycliff]

Aven nodded. "Very much so: due to my dark matter, if you were a demon, you'd probably be killed on the spot, disintegrated into nothing but particles. Not a pleasant fate, believe me." The circle around her began to glow with a silver light, as did Aven's eyes, before he closed them and began to chant. "I call upon you, the host of the night, they who guard the dusk, heed my words and come forth from the darkness..." The silver light faded as shadowy wisps rose from the lines, and the silver dust slowly turned pitch black. "...Grant your favor to this being, spurned by the sun, that they may fear the light no longer..." The shadows coagulated into a black mist, which surrounded Nisreen, developing into a thick fog and swirling at an ever increasing pace as he spoke, a magical tingling emanating from the back of her neck. "...and shatter the curse of daybreak!"

The fog dissipated instantly, the circle fading, leaving only a small black sigil where the tingling had been felt. Aven collapsed back into his chair, exhausted, his hands glowing a dull silver. "Whew.... that took more out of me than I thought it would..."


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[Valtxr]

   Nisreen watched the display with fascination. So this was magic. At least, one form of it. Though there almost certainly had to be commonalities between Aven's magic and other types. The glowing, for instance. Magic seemed to involve a lot of glowing parts. Perhaps the dust and the shadow things weren't always there, but—
   Oh. The shadow things did something. Formed some kind of black mist, not too much unlike a morning mist lingering over a lake or a field. Well, except for it being black. And swirling around her as Aven spoke. Those early mornings would certainly be a lot less picturesque if those mists acted like these mists. It would scare children. Small animals. That wouldn't do. That'd be horrific. Well, as far as Nisreen knew, maybe there was such a place where magic had affected the local weather patterns to such an extent that—
   Nisreen's body tensed up immediately when she felt an odd sensation on the back of her neck. Her eyes wide with shock and fear.
   It could only be one thing.
   A spider.
   The second the fog and the circle disappeared, and Nisreen assumed she could move again, she immediately threw off her satchel and her cloak and untied the muffler from her neck. She beat the back of her neck repeatedly with her hand. Frantically. Crying out as she did so.
   "Ah! Aven! Help! I-I think a spider bit me! Get it off me! I don't like spiders. Not at all."
   She hurried over to him in the chair. Kneeled down. Grabbed the back of her tunic and pulled it down and away from her neck some. Inadvertently revealing a hint of the tattoos covering her back just below the cloth.
   "Did I get it? Please tell me I got it. Please tell me it's gone."