Carrot and Stick - Chapter XXVIII (Patreon)

Chapter XXVIII

Carrot decided to take it easy the next day. 

She was on winter break, and almost since the start, there hadn’t been a single day where she just stayed home and acted lazy. That was almost sinful wasn’t it? Winter breaks were for staying cooped up in her room and spending hours doing unimportant stuff.

So, when she woke up, Carrot turned around and went right back to sleep, only really waking up properly when her mom came in to check on her. Then her mom, being the best mom in the entire world (she even had a mug that said so!) made Carrot breakfast and brought it to her in her room, with a small second bowl that had a few fruit for Carrot’s little bat friend.

“Thanks mom!” Carrot said.

“You’re welcome, sweetie. Are you feeling better?”

“Mhm!” Carrot said with a quick nod. She was feeling a bit better. 

Last night had been a lot, and so she decided that today would be a little. And that meant no magic! Which seemed very easy at first, but even as she ate her breakfast, Carrot realized that she had been doing a bit of magic here and there all day every day, especially since meeting Mister Silas. 

It had become something she could joyfully hyperfocus on, and better yet, it was something she was kinda good at. The total opposite of stuff like schoolwork, where she had to study her butt off just to keep her grades above middling and where some things still leaked out of her as if her head was a sieve. 

She liked history, but the political parts confused her, and while she was good at navigating her city, geography as a subject just wasn’t her forte. 

“Are you just going to lie there?”

Carrot looked over to the small cage where Bathemious was glaring at her. The fact that he was upside down took a lot of the venom out of the look. “I was kind of planning on it, yeah,” she admitted. “I had a long day yesterday, and I think it’d be wise to let my magic cool off for a bit.”

“Hmph. What happened? You say your own reflection and spooked yourself?” the bat asked.

Carrot giggled. “No! But that’s a good one. Ah, Mister Silas and I found this daemon that worked for that Master guy.”

“And you had your butt kicked,” the bat said with a nod.

“No... well, maybe a little? But we won in the end. Maybe you knew them?”

“The Master had a lot of daemons working for him. You can’t expect me to know them all,” Bathemious said.

“Hmm, I guess that’s fair. He had a lot of underlings working for him. They were staying in this big factory and--”

“Three!” the bat chirped.

Carrot grinned widder and nodded. “Yeah! He had a big three tattooed onto him. He was strong. At some point he used something called a Vow and it made him a bunch stronger. Though I guess not that much stronger. He wasn’t very creative with it. Just bigger and tougher.”

The bat shook his little head, as if to clear it, which had the effect of making his ears flick around. “That’s not possible. Three was one of the top lieutenants that the Master has. You couldn’t beat him.”

“Why not?” Carrot asked. “I don’t want to be rude or anything, but I did kind of beat you, no?”

“Sure, by underhanded means! But before you stripped me of all of my hard-earned power. I was just a lesser daemon though. The three are big deals!”

“Two, now,” Carrot said before she set the dishes her mom brought onto her nightstand and then fell back into bed, hands going to her tummy. “And I’m much stronger now than I was before. Not that I want to be overconfident or anything. I just... I think I’ll be stronger once I recover.”

“You’d have to be. Two and One are powerhouses, above even Three,” Bathemious said. “They’re in a whole different league.”

“Powerhouses... leagues. Where are you picking these words up?” Carrot asked. “I don’t think Mister Rogers uses any of that, and I don’t think Sesame Street mentions them either. Did you know them from before?”

The bat sniffed. “I have other places where I can learn words, you know!”

Carrot blinked, then climbed up onto her elbows. There was her laptop next to the cage, still upside down so that Bathemious could watch some shows. “Wait a minute,” she said before scooching to the edge of her bed then getting up. 

A few moments later she gasped as she logged in. “Bathemious, have you been on the internet this whole time? How?”

The bat looked away from her, but Carrot just shifted around to stand on the other side of his cage. “Fine!” he snapped. “The nice one changed things when I complained! The shows you put on sucked!”

“What! No! I put on good, wholesome, educational shows. You were watching... wrestling? That’s not wholesome at all!”

“I like seeing people get hurt,” he said with an evil little chuckle.

Carrot pouted. “Baby shows from now on. And I’ll tell mom, too.”

“Evil!” he shouted. “First a liar, now an evil overlady!” 

“I’m not a liar. Lying is mean,” Carrot said. 

“You said you defeated Three, but I don’t believe you.”

She sniffed and deposited the laptop on her bed to properly cross her arms. “Well, I did. I had to do a Vow and everything. It’s why I’m not using my magic today. Magic feels a little... wibbly-wobbly today, so I don’t want to push it.”

“Oh,” Bathemious said. He pulled his wings in closer and stared at her with narrowed eyes.

“Oh?” Carrot asked. “What’s the ‘oh’ for?”

“Nothing,” the bat said.

“I don’t know, that didn’t sound like a very nothing sort of ‘oh’ to me,” Carrot said. She did retreat to her bed though, pulling blankets over herself as well as a few dozen plushies. “It’s going to take a bit, I think, before everything settles.” She grabbed a whale plushie and gave it a squeeze.

Bathemious shifted around to face her properly. “Avowed... I suppose that maybe that would do it. Maybe. I’m not convinced though.”

“That’s okay! Maybe I can show you, later? For today, no magic.”

She could feel the way magic was swirling inside of her. She had done her very best to clean it all out, but it felt a bit like... like water that was in the sink after doing the dishes. It wasn’t dirty really, but there was gunk at the bottom and it was all very soapy and gross. Not like the purer, cleaner magic she was used to.

It was getting better, though. She had been filtering it over and over again, and now had a grasp on a lump of gross stuff that she’d have to toss as soon as she could.

Letting her magic settle was like letting the dish water settle as well. All of the heavier gunk would sink to the bottom, and once it was there, she’d be able to scoop it all up with greater ease. 

Maybe it would take more than one day of low magic use? 

Well, whatever. It would take the time that it took. She didn’t think she was breaking her promise to magic by taking a few little moments off to let herself cool down. Taking out Mister Three had been a big job, after all.

Given a few days, though, she’d be back and ready to practice magic some more. She felt a lot more aware of her own magic, and the magic in the world around her, and she was looking forwards to seeing how that would interact with her spellwork.

There was no reason that her spells would be weaker now, right? Not when she felt like magic was... just kind of more?

Before her Vow, magic had been as real as wind or sunlight or anything else that she couldn’t quite see but which she could feel.

Now it was like... like she could see the fan blowing the wind, or see the sun high above. It wasn’t just a casual effect moving by her, it had a source. 

She wasn’t sure if she could do anything with that knowledge, but it still felt important. “Do you think the Master has a Vow?” she asked.

“Probably,” the bat replied. “Probably more than one, even. But if you think I’ll tell you more, then you’re mistaken. The Master will already be ready to hunt you down. I won’t have Two or One discover me here, or the Master’s Pet for that matter. When they find me, I want to be able to say that I told you nothing.”

“Oh,” Carrot said. “What if I allow you to pick one episode of whatever you want to watch per day. As long as it’s not rated... hmm, I guess you’d be a teen bat, right?”

“Two!”

Carrot grinned and hugged her plushie a little harder. “One,” she replied. “But I’ll get you some popcorn at the same time?”

“What even is that?” he asked.

Yeah, she had him now! The Master’s secrets would all be hers! So much for taking a day off, huh?

***