Chapter XXV
Can legit not remember if I shared the new cover, lol!
***
“Okay, so, what’s a Vow?” Carrot asked. “And is it a capital-V kind of thing?”
Silas stared at her, then he sighed. This was a terrible idea. But time was running short. So, he knelt down onto the ground and sat on his heels and closed his eyes for a moment. If they had more than an hour, then he could use that time to regain some magic.
His first plan was a sort of alpha-strike. Pop Carrot’s bubble while he had a strong spell prepared and launch it directly at the daemon. If she supported him with a few thorns, maybe preparing as many as she could, they might be able to inflict some damage, enough to maybe make it possible to break out of the factory and get away.
He wasn’t sure that would work. His strongest spell had been tried already, and it didn’t do much more than flinch the daemon. Did he have anything with more oomph? Maybe... if he had his spellbook. He had a few spells with some real kick in there, but they were spells that were more circumstantial, that he hadn’t practiced for hours on end and which he didn’t know how to cast without some amount of guidance.
“Mister Silas?”
He groaned. That wouldn’t work well, would it? So, what was left?
Looking up, Silas met Carrot’s eyes. He expected to see that same kind of innocent naivete that he had seen before. But while there was some of that, her eyes had more. There was a depth to Carrot that only popped up some of the time, when she chose to set aside the silliness that he found was her core personality, and took things seriously.
Carrot was taking this very seriously. The smile was just a habit, he suspected.
“A Vow, and yes, that’s a capital V, is... a sort of promise. Keep in mind that I’m not Avowed myself. I only know what I was taught and what I picked up by osmosis. Those with a Vow mostly reside as rank V and up wizards. Mostly ‘and up’ because it’s uncommon. Not impossible. Each ordo probably has half a hundred or more Avowed, but it’s not something you just do.”
“Okay, so it’s rare, got it,” Carrot said. “Would it help us?”
“Yes,” he said simply. He licked his lips, then wished he had something to drink. Strange, how just a few minutes of running around and fighting could make him so thirsty. “Magic is... complicated, sure, but we can wrestle it into order, make it do as we want. We have formulas and spells. We can control it, at least to a small degree.”
Carrot nodded. “I’m with you so far,” she said.
“Well, an Avowed is different. It’s... less controlling magic, and more just blindly trusting in it. You have to treat magic itself as less of a thing you can use and more like a thing that’s alive, that has its own will and wants. It’s like... looking at the ocean and deciding that it’s a person.”
“I think sailors have been doing that for a long time, no?” Carrot asked.
“Yes. But it’s complicated anyway. I think even most sailors know that the ocean isn’t a person. That’s the first hurdle. Personifying magic. The second is striking a deal with magic itself.”
Carrot nodded. “Okay. So what kind of deal?”
“That’s the issue. It needs to be fair and equitable. I met one Wizard Knight, he was a senior at the Ordo, and he was somewhat helpful a few times. Um. He wore an eye patch. His Vow traded the sight in that eye for something. I don’t know what, exactly, but it limited him in exchange for power.”
“You need to hurt yourself?” Carrot asked.
Silas shook his head. “No. You need to strike a fair deal. It’s not any less complicated than the rest. The more magic feels like the deal is ‘fair’ the more power it gives.”
“What sort of power?” Carrot asked. “Because I could quintuple the amount of magic energy I have and I don’t think it would do much for me.”
He had to resist the urge to groan. There weren’t very many people that could so casually say that. “It’s sometimes raw energy, yes. But more often than not it’s an original expression of magic. Or a not-so-original one? I think some ordos have lots of Avowed that make the same, well-known Vow. That gives them a more uniform power. A lot of the modern spells we have come from reverse-engineering spells gained through Vows.”
“Ohhh,” Carrot said. “That’s neat.”
“There’s more to it than that,” he said. “Vows make people stronger in other ways, sometimes. It’s not always the case, but they often make the Avowed better at wizardry overall. I’m not entirely sure what that means, howe--”
He flinched as a loud bang sounded out and the entire sphere of the shield around them felt like it was pressed in.
“I think the Fisher isn’t happy,” Carrot said. She sighed, then sat down on the ground and crossed her legs while adjusting her skirt. “Okay. Let’s do this Vow thing. What do I need to do?”
“I was going to talk about the risks, next,” he said. “There are consequences to magic rejecting a Vow.”
“There are consequences to me not succeeding, and those are mostly death, so let’s not dwell on the bad stuff, huh? When success is the only option, you plan to succeed.”
He thought that was rather short-sighted, but he didn’t say that aloud. “Fine.”
“So, how do I do this?” she asked.
“I don’t know, exactly. But I’ll tell you what I do know. You need to commune with magic. I think that means spending a lot of magical energy, because most of the Avowed I’ve heard of have been senior wizards who have had the time to grow large reserves.”
“Got that,” Carrot said.
He reluctantly nodded. She did have that. “Next, you need to talk to magic itself by holding onto that large quantity of magic, then you make your Vow and hope for the best.”
“That’s it?”
“It’s magic, not science,” he defended.
Carrot frowned, then shrugged. “I guess? Okay, let’s see if I can’t get this to work. Uh, my Vow, what should it be?”
“I don’t know,” he replied truthfully. “You have to make a pact. An agreement. Something for something. Sometimes it’s temporary. Going blind for the duration, or sometimes it’s a sense... touch, smell, taste.”
Carrot nodded, then she reached out with her magic and grabbed. He felt it. The air around him thickened a little, and became heavier.
Carrot frowned, brows drawing together before she let out a breath and the magic in the sphere loosened back to normality. “Not enough,” she said. Then she brought her hands together. “More, then... When I... yeah, okay.”
She took a deep breath.
“I am one with the will of the world.”
He recognized some of the spellwork. It was her Rite of Dark Purification, in a way, but also very much not. She was modifying the spell even as she cast it.
“I open the hollow within myself, and bid you enter. What watches from beneath and beyond, what listens and draws forever near, shadows that know my name, patient and kind... I, Carrot C. Cuddlesworth, third of the name, welcome you. Rite of Dark Communion.”
The air snapped.
The shield around them warbled, the edges shifting as a ripple tore through them, then it held, if only barely. There were spots where he could see just outside, see the dozens of daemons waiting for the shield to break, and their larger leader standing nearby, prowling back and forth.
Silas swallowed. The air grew so thick as magic was pulled inwards, pulled towards Carrot, that he felt like he couldn’t breathe.
It was like trying to suck air away from stormy winds.
“Magic,” Carrot said, and the air thrummed in response.
Was that her, or was that magic itself?
“I want to make a Vow. Please, listen and consider. Please? I... I Vow to take all that is bad in the world, and make it good.”
Silas gasped.
He was so stupid. How... he had pressed onwards, told her what he knew, but there were consequences. A Vow that was impossible to keep was not one that magic would readily accept.
Carrot, of course, did the impossible anyway.
The shield exploded outwards, and following it was a wave of raw magic so strong that Silas found himself rolling backwards rear over teakettle. The daemons nearby didn’t fare any better, the smaller ones were thrown back and the larger stumbled.
The air stilled, dust gently falling down from above like snow.
In the centre of the explosion was Carrot.
She leaned forwards, planted a hand on the dirty ground, then rocked forwards and stood. “Ah,” she said. “Well, this is... neat. Could be a bit longer, though.”
***
Carrot was never one for shorter skirts and the like. It looked fine on other girls, but... something about showing off too much leg made her feel a little uncomfortable.
Still, the skirt she had on now was very magical girl coded, and poofy, and yes, she did have thick, lacy pantaloons under it, so it wasn’t any worse than wearing gym shorts. Actually, it was probably better.
Reaching out, she touched the brim of her hat. It had grown bigger again. “Shucks,” she said. She’d been good about keeping her magic in tight. “Mister Silas, how do I look?”
Unfortunately, Mister Silas was indisposed at the moment, being mostly upside-down and curled up in a ball. The only reason he wasn’t further away was because he’d bumped into the side of one of the machines in the room.
“Oops,” Carrot said.
Mister Silas groaned.
Carrot held back a giggle. As funny as it was, and as fantastic as she was feeling, she also knew that she was on the clock.
The magic coursing through her was powerful, potent, it felt like scalding hot water slipping through her veins, but that water was dissipating and cooling off.
It really sucked, because she really wanted to see herself in a mirror.
The magic had worked. More, she suddenly just knew how to use something that had been evading her for a while. Abyssal Bloom of Moonlight Manifest.
“So, you had your own little tricks,” said a smooth voice from across the room.
Carrot looked up and met the eyes of the Fisher-turned-daemon. “I have a few, yeah,” she said.
His Avowed transformation hadn’t changed at all. It seemed like he wasn’t on any sort of timer, not the way she was.
That, too, was just... something she understood. Strange, how that worked.
She had made a deal with magic, or maybe part of magic? It didn’t like daemons, sometimes. Or it didn’t like when daemons went too far? She wasn’t sure. Her communion had been short.
Still, she got the gist of it.
As long as she did her very best to cleanse the world of darker, more cruel magic, then her end of the bargain would be kept.
If she did a little extra, well, that was just nice.
Carrot grinned. “I’m going to take all of your dark magic away. Sorry, but it’s kind of what I have to do. Um... if you surrender, we can be nice about it?”
“Tsk, you think I’d roll over like a pup?” he asked. “Kill her.”
The last was aimed at all of the smaller daemons around the room. They howled and barked and started to scramble towards her.
“Oh well,” Carrot said. “I tried the nice way, I guess.”
***