Chapter 81 - Forming the Coven II (Patreon)

“What?” Felix’s voice broke as a flush invaded his face.

He couldn’t - she wasn’t thinking of - what kind of question was that!?

Vivian’s eyes sparkled with mirth.

“You heard me! Have you ever kissed someone before? It’s a strong connection. Someone’s first kiss? Unforgettable. Everyone remembers it. Wait. That doesn’t matter. Do you want to kiss me?”

Felix looked around, trying to get a hint if he was being set up or something. Nice things like this just didn’t happen to him! Nevermind that everything in his body was screaming YES!, and most of his brain was urging him along. There had to be some sort of trick, some-

Vivian closed her eyes and slowly brought their lips together. The moment before contact, Felix decided that, no, this wasn’t a joke, and yes, he very much liked the idea of kissing Vivian. 

Felix’s brain short-circuited. There was an impression of sparks, fireworks, and all sorts of happy butterflies. 

It ended far too quickly. Vivian strutted over to where Felix’s diagram had been dropped, picked up the pen, and drew a line between her dot and his dot.

“And first kiss, boom! That should qualify as a strong connection.” She said smugly. 

“Buh?” Felix asked dumbly.

“You broke him.” Alex’s giggle sounded strange, coming from her. 

Vivian sighed dramatically.

“The things I do for love and friendship!” 

“You’re making it sound like you didn’t enjoy that more than Felix. Plus, if you keep talking like that, you’ll make him feel bad.” Erik said. “How you doing?”

“Good. Very good.” Felix was slowly coming back down to Arcadia. 

Sora eyed the chart, only missing a line between herself and Felix to complete the pentagram. She eyed Felix, then shrugged.

“Pucker up!” Was Felix’s only warning before the flighty girl quickly pressed her lips to his. Half a second later, she bounced over to the diagram, snatched the pen from Vivian’s hands, and drew a line between her dot and Felix’s.

Vivian put her hands on her hips.

“That wasn’t a first kiss anymore.” She complained.

“It was my first kiss, so it counts.” Sora replied.

Felix’s brain had been going all over the place.

“You know, if this is what happens when I do advanced ritual research, I think I’m going to do a lot more of it.” He said. 

Alex slapped the table.

“Alright, enough with the mushy stuff. The minor problem you were talking about with the ritual’s fixed, yeah? Let’s deal you in, and get started on the next round.”

Felix was at least grateful that Alexandria wasn’t insisting they reviewed and practiced the ritual one more time. He could still smell honey. 

==================

The boys went to bed after a modest sized feast their hosts threw, the first festival of the Autumn Equinox, and quite a lot of brownnosing towards their future liege lord. Felix stared up at the ceiling, still replaying the earlier events. He couldn’t get the two girls out of his head.

And… dating? Was that a thing? Were they doing that now?

Oh god, it’d be so expensive. Dates and presents and good clothes and - it was all just too much! He was too poor to date!

Wait. What about all the makeup he’d bought for Vivian? Did he still need to sell it? Should it? Was that the right move? Was it crass? Wait, it wasn’t all his money. He should talk to Erik about it. 

Oh no. Why did it all have to become so complicated!?

“Dude.” Erik said, sensing Felix’s consternation.

“Yeah?” Felix replied.

“Don’t overthink it too hard.”

Felix didn’t wonder how Erik knew. He groaned.

“How can I not?” He asked.

“By remembering that it was friendly?” Erik said.

Felix groaned again, mashing his pillow into his face.

“Well… if nothing else, let’s not make it weird.” He said.

Felix was about to try and retort, saying that Erik and Alex made it weird, but paused. It was petty - he was in the mood to be petty - but there just wasn’t a single example he could think of. He was very sure that kissing was very nice, however.

“Doesn’t not making it weird mean I’m trying to minimize the connection, which weakens the strength of the bond?” Felix asked.

Erik groaned.

“Are you ever going to forget the moment?” He asked.

Felix thought about it, and his first response was ‘heck no’. Then he thought about it some more.

“Well… there are about a million mind spells that could wipe the knowledge out, conceal it, extract it from my head, remove…”

Erik threw a pillow at Felix.

“Odin, you’re such a swot.”

“Fine.” He agreed, and rolled over.

Sleep eluded him for hours more, the memory of honey on his lips.

=================

The first thing Felix did in the morning was take a ritual bath, cleansing his body and mind for the day ahead.

‘Pure’ water was one of the concepts he’d initially struggled with. Both the mundane and magical worlds had pure water, but with radically different interpretations of what it was.

The mundane world wanted water. Pure H2O. No other contaminants, no chemicals, nothing else. Steam captured and condensed into a glass flask, carefully measured and ready for chemistry.

The magical world was horrified at such an idea. That sort of water was the furthest thing from pure. 

In the magical world, there were degrees of purity. Alexandria had insisted on the purest for herself. She’d gotten up hours before dawn, hiked up a hill with a barrel strapped to her back with other like-minded wixen, filled it up from the cleansed source of a stream the moment the sun crested over the hill, and used that as her ritual bath.

Felix was perfectly content with ‘mostly pure’ water. It had been collected from the same place the night before, and the special baths, with runes carved into white marble, mostly made up for any small differences.

There was an odd tension at the baths. They weren’t for everyday use, nor were there enough of them for everyone to use. At the same time, when people wanted to use them, they all wanted to use them. But scheduling and rushing things made it not work nearly as well, and…

It was a mess and a half. Felix was lucky that Erik flexed his name, and got them a spot. ‘Forming a coven’ was a fairly important ritual, all things considered, but all rituals were important to the people conducting them.

While the two were quite close in the mundane world, there was a huge gulf between ‘clean’ and ‘pure’. Clean, the pure water was not.

But it was unusually clear, and it tingled with raw magic. Felix could almost feel some metaphysical weight lifting off his shoulders. He felt lighter, in some way he couldn’t describe.

After the baths, there was a great feast for lunch on the Equinox. Apple tarts and roasted nuts, mutton stew and potato pancakes. Felix found a coin in his barmbrack bread, and was starting to feel light-headed as Erik reached over and grabbed his wrist.

“That’s the whiskey soaked one.” He said. “Now, it’s fine if you want to try it, but you’re kind of a lightweight. You might want to try the tea one.”

Felix looked down dumbly at the dish he’d served himself.

“Oh. Right, yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

Sora rolled her eyes in utter disdain, then snatched the remaining loaf off Felix’s plate.

“Yoink! Mine!”

When the desserts came out, Erik gestured for the five of them to huddle up.

“Let’s not stuff ourselves here.” He said, looking around. “I want to slip out before the end of the feast, and get going before it becomes a mess.”

Felix looked mournfully at the three-tiered ice cream cake that was moving past them. It had a chocolate volcano at the top, regularly erupting with thick syrup.

“You sure?” He asked longingly.

“I swear, if your stomach screws up the ritual, I will put this fork through it.” Alex hissed, menacing Felix with said fork.

Felix defiantly grabbed a slice of cake and a slice of pie. Alex made the ‘I’m watching you’ gesture, then the five of them got eating.

“We’re all done? Great, let’s get a move on.”

Erik made some polite words to their hosts, and the five of them left the so-called ‘castle’. Erik handed out brooms to everyone, and they all took off from the street.

Sora immediately began flying circles around the other four. Felix’s grip on his broom was a little shaky, having only done a few drills with the rest of his Stravolux team. Vivian immediately looked green.

“Flying doesn’t agree with me.” She said.

Alexandria had dirty looks, but Erik motioned them all to drop down to the ground. Only Sora stayed up in the air, flying lazy upside down circles above them.

“I swear I’ve got something for… ahha!” He said, pulling out a potion. “For you.”

Alex moved as if to grab the vial, but paused.

“It’s not going to count as extra magic interfering with the ritual by the time we get there, right?” She whispered.

Erik frowned and studied the vial.

“I… want to say yes, but I don’t know.” He said.

Vivian waved him off.

“I’ll live, don’t worry about me. Let’s go, before poor Alex has a stroke.”

The four of them took off again, then oriented south, towards the ritual site. Sora ran an obnoxiously cheerful commentary the entire way.

“Felix, you should scoot back a little on your broom. Not that far! Yeah, there. Alright, next you’ll want to just throw yourself off to the side, while keeping a firm grip on your broom. That’s how you do a barrel roll.”

Felix glared murder at the girl who’d kissed him last night.

“Fine. An axial roll, if you’re going to be so pedantic about it.”

“The heck’s an axial roll?” Felix asked.

“What he said.” Vivian chimed in.

Whatever Alex tried to say was lost to the wind, and the girl went red with anger.

“It’s where you spin on your broom.” Sora replied, performing the maneuver in question.

“Normally, I’d say that’s a shit explanation, but you actually demonstrated it, so full marks.” Erik said.

“Thank you, Professor Morsin.” Sora sarcastically replied. 

The four of them - Alex excluded, because she couldn’t make herself be heard over the wind - chatted as they flew to the ritual site. Above the patchwork fields, the crisp autumn breeze brushed their skin as gold and rust-colored leaves blurred and swirled together. The Atlantic glimmered like a jewel, and the cool air carried the scent of peat and moss up to the fliers. The rolling hills and ancient stones quickly vanished as their sturdy brooms ate the distance.

“Sluagh.” Sora said tersely. She pointed over the horizon where the host of restless spirits were massing. Somewhere between a mix of undead wraiths and dark fairies, they looked like a particularly roiling cloud. Too far away for the members of the nascent coven to hear their screams. 

“Fly low, fly tight.” Erik tersely ordered. Sora took point, Erik and Alex swept in behind her, and the two weaker fliers trailed at the end. All banter and enjoyment vanished, as Sora deftly navigated the crew, all while keeping a weather eye on the undead.

“I don’t think they’re after us. Or even spotted us.” Sora said after a few tense minutes.

“The sooner we’re done with this, the happier I’ll be.” Erik said.

“There!” Sora pointed out the standing stones of their ritual site. The five of them banked and landed without any further issues. Felix knew that, in theory, they could stack a regular Equinox ritual along with the coven ritual, but also that they were nowhere near good enough to make it work.

Erik carefully placed his bag a good distance from the graveyard.

“Ladies first.” He said, and the three girls climbed down into his bag.

“Any bets how long it takes the three of them to get changed?” Felix asked.

“Heck no, I enjoy living.” Erik said, reaching into his bag again and pulling out a cup and some dice. “But I also think we’ve got some time with nothing else to do. We’re not doing one last ritual review.” He said, cutting off Felix’s obvious question.

The two boys found a flat-enough rock, and played dice until the girls came back in their robes.

“This is itchy.” Sora complained, picking at the plain wool robe.

“And hideous.” Vivian shuddered. Alex rolled her eyes at the two.

“It's magically inert, which is what matters. It’s not like you’re wearing it to a dance.” She hissed.

“Our turn!” Erik hopped into the bag, Felix following right behind him.

“Remember, everything else off.” Erik said. “Socks. Shoes. Underwear. Only the robes.” He said.

Felix wasn’t super comfortable with the idea, but it was what everyone else was doing.

“Sure.” He agreed, and changed into the robe.

Robe was putting it generously. It was made out of undyed wool. It couldn’t be from the first time the sheep was shorn, or the last. It couldn’t have too much effort put into it, but it had to actually be clothing, otherwise it could start to look like a reagent. Felix had gotten a tiny glimpse at the entire industry that made up the ritual robes business, and there were complex depths he could just barely see the surface of. He knew just enough to know he was entirely ignorant on the subject.

And Sora had been completely correct. The robes were itchy. A mild distraction that he’d need to power through.

The two boys left Erik’s satchel - far faster than the girls had, Felix thought smugly to himself, but would never say that out loud - and looked up at the hill.

“Right then. Let’s get everything prepared.” Erik said.

Felix couldn’t stop a mad grin.

He was going to do a ritual! A real ritual!