Eva hopped in. The room was already hot and steamy, borderline sauna. Eva didn’t mind. If anything, it could stand to be a little hotter. Cold, moist air was the worst.
Eva twisted the shower head, aligning her new runes. She wasn’t sure if the other girls used the regular water or her runes. She’d told them, but they never mentioned anything other than a ‘too hot for my tastes’ from Shalise.
After kneeling down to the floor, Arachne hopped off Eva. She stood up in human form, ready for one of their shower chats.
“I say let her,” Arachne said before Eva could even ask her question. “If she dies, whatever. It is a good test of loyalty. Of course, if she turns traitor then I will rip her into so many pieces not even Humpty Dumpty could put her back together again.”
Eva frowned at the demon. Not so much at her threating to tear Juliana up, Eva was used to the spider-demon’s empty viciousness, but the other bit. “I’m not sure that is how the nursery rhyme goes.”
The spider-woman shrugged. “Besides, I’m sick of sneaking around. If I could at least walk around the room… and now we have that Shalise character. Juliana is one thing. Are you sure I can’t eat Shalise?”
“No eating any students. Or hurting any in general. Even if they do ‘turn traitor’ whatever loose definition you have for that.” Eva sighed. The demon wouldn’t do anything, she was mostly sure. It didn’t hurt to reiterate. “If things do happen, we’ll just leave. You, me, and master. If we can’t find him, we’ll summon Ivonis again after we settle down somewhere.”
“That’s disappointing,” she said. Eva didn’t think her pout looked very serious.
“If we are actually taking Juliana, we’ve got to find master and let him know. He won’t like it.”
“Leave it to me. I will
“No bullying master.”
“Wouldn’t touch a hair on his head,” Arachne said.
“You’re excited about this.”
“It is one step on my plan to not be in spider form constantly.” Arachne was already shifting back into said spider form.
Eva sighed, standing up into the stream of hot water. Her shower had gone on long enough. She shut off the water. As Arachne climbed back up her chest, Eva mumbled, “I’m sure not excited about it.”
Theory: Rituals
“How do rituals work with how humans process magic?”
Zoe Baxter stopped her lecture on foci and glanced over at Benjamin Yeets. The sleepy eyed boy flinched away as Zoe’s eyes settled on him. She tried to avoid frowning.
“Excellent question, Mr. Yeets. Don’t be afraid to ask a question if there is something you think I can explain. There are no stupid questions.”
A lie to be sure. Zoe had been asked her fair share of stupid questions in her five years of teaching. An atmosphere of fear was not what she wanted to cultivate. Something she had failed at her first year of teaching.
There were still fifth and sixth years who she had during her first year that refused to do anything but take notes and ace tests.
“Rituals,” Zoe said, “are essentially large, single purpose foci. You’ll learn more about them in your third year, but a short lesson won’t hurt.”
She picked up a black marker and drew a large circle on the board. With a repressed smile at its neatness, Zoe turned back to the class. “Rituals start with a circle, generally large enough to fit oneself or an object within. There are a handful of rituals that will affect things outside the circle, but these are few and far between; not to mention they are significantly more dangerous than a regular ritual.”
Zoe turned back to the board and continued drawing out marks and lines within the circle as she spoke. “If you were to channel magic into the air around you, nothing would happen. It would dissipate with barely a noticeable rise in local magic levels. If you stand within a properly formed ritual circle, however, the magic you channel becomes trapped. The large amount of raw magic is one of the main dangers of rituals.
“The lines and characters drawn out within the circle,” she pointed out the spots on her own drawing, “will direct your magic. Malformed directions are another big danger. Properly formed, your magic flows along your written will and acts as you wish.”
She tapped the circle on the board. “This, for instance, will cause a stone placed within to glow. The magic you release into the ritual circle will siphon into an illumination spell within the stone.”
Several of the students had half formed ritual circles drawn out in their notebooks. Their pens scratched on their paper as they copied down the circle.
A number of students didn’t. Neither Juliana nor Eva even had their notebooks open. Miss Eva, she expected mostly due to the young mage’s familiarity with runes. The two types of magic weren’t related apart from writing things down, but they were similar enough that Zoe expected her to have experience in unorthodox magic systems.
