“I’m telling you, it’s perfect for your freshman.” He scanned the page a bit more. “Okay, here’s how most real spells work. You get your target, or something with sympathy, and you utter these words here,” he said, going over two lines tabbed out of the rest of the description. They were entirely Arcanan symbols. “Don’t need to focus all that much. You see, longer spells like this are codified by the author. They tween and tweak and get the Arcanan words to mean exactly what they mean to produce the desired effect. You just need to know what it was meant to do, and it’ll do it.” he said, flipping the pages over and scanning it again. I noticed another tabbed-out section.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Ah. It’s something like an English translation of the spell.” he said. “And, like most of the spells I came up with then, it’s a rhyme. Once you learn the Arcanan words, all you gotta do is remember the rhyme to know the order. Plus, as culture would suggest, rhymes have power. Even though those aren’t the words you’re saying, it links the meanings together in a way that you find special. That’s what magic is all about, in a way.”
I took the paper from him and looked more closely.
“Then two natures, hid inside
One will live when one does die
Hold both to childish innocence
But to one, sexual deference
From one to break, the new arising
Never to find it unsurprising
Bending now to my desires
In childish passion, lusty fires”
“Not my best work, I’ll admit. But it gets the job done,” he said.
“Sympathy. You’ve talked about it before,” I asked.
“Yes. Well, it’s like this. Everything in the world has connections. The deeper they are, the better you can manipulate them. Like, your connection with your sign word, Desdiri, is about as deep as these things get, seeing as we magically bound it to you. Same with your Shadow name. However, we don’t just make ties to ideas and words, we make ties to things and people,” he said. “So, say I walk by a bus stop and lean against the post. I do it once, nothing much. I do it a hundred times, the pole itself gains some magical resonance with me. Partially because I hold it significant in my mind, partially because we are cosmically connected.” He paused to let me take it in. “Someone’s hairbrush, someone’s bed, each of these are connected to that person by magical sympathy. Blood and bodily fluids, hair, and skin are also really great examples, although blood magic has even deeper potential. We’ll get into that later.” He leaned forward on my bed.
“When you were dealing with Gracie, she was right in front of you. No amount of sympathy was required, you had the object of the spell itself. Ripe for the picking. Now, when you don’t have the advantage of having your subject with you, or when you want to cast spells on them without their knowledge, your spell has more power when you utilize the magical bonds of sympathy. You take the object,” he said, holding out his left hand and grabbing an imaginary handle. “That hairbrush or whatever. And you focus onto your target,” he said, clutching it closer. “Magic runs through symbolism. No distance. No time. No space. So you can impact things by manipulating those symbols. When I called up that book, I focused on my House name, written on the cover, and my notes in the back. Two strongest symbolic ties I could make,” he said. “Oh, and with that spell of yours, know that it’s only going to get stronger the closer you get to Gracie. The more you have sex,” he said, teasingly. I winced a bit.
“Hmm… you know, you talk different sometimes,” I said. Because I was so lost in thought, my words got kind of jumbled.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when you’re teaching or at our hangout…”
“Sanctum,” he quickly interrupted.
“Our ‘sanctum,'” I said, pausing as if to taste the word. “you talk formal, official, like a leader, right? But when you came in, you were all buddy-buddy with me.”
“Heh” he said. “Yeah, I suppose. Always trained to present a strong front. To be calm and collected. To train you up in the Arcanan way. But, let’s face it, we all got to let loose sometimes,” he sighed.
“Hm. I kind of like it when you let loose,” I said, smiling.
“Heh. Speaking of letting loose, I have another something for you,” he said, pulling a sheet of paper from another pocket. “Just some rudimentary spells for any further exploits you may be pursuing, y’know, some basic wrap-it-before-you-tap-it stuff. Except we’re mages, so no condoms. You have fun kiddo. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Luca’s been waiting for me,” he said suggestively. He stood up and crossed to the closet. He opened the door and shut it behind him sloppily. It creaked back open into nothingness. Thinking about this stunt later on, I couldn’t help but realize how funny it was that he chose that closet. It wasn’t the kind you hang clothes in, it was full of shelves, as if to store linen. There was no way he could humanly fit, if he’d actually had to go into the closet to use whatever trickery it was he was using.
I thought about all he had said. About how he didn’t mind what I did. Almost suggesting I should go ahead and do so. Whenever.
“What did I do?” I then asked myself.
1. I had gave oral sex to a beautiful young girl, which she enjoyed until orgasm.
2. I recieved same favor in return, although she did not know said favor was magically coerced out of her.
“Did I do something she didn’t want?” I thought. I didn’t know any mind control spells. I just mentally manipulated her to a level of lust she wasn’t quite used to. I couldn’t really “force” her to have sex with me magically; I just wasn’t at that level of power yet. I made her have desire. She chose to act on it.
Likewise, she chose to reciprocate. Had I gave her a desire, or merely a suggestion in the guise of a desire? I didn’t know. I wasn’t her. I couldn’t say.
I then came to these two conclusions:
1. She consented to the act performed on her and the subsequent act performed on me.
2. Two people who have willing sexual activity with each other are not doing anything wrong.
The second was morally iffy, but I found myself believing the underlying principle to be true. So what if we’re “underage”? Nobody got pregnant or sick; we were both virgins.
So it was okay.
Right?
I snapped out of my philosophical ramblings and looked down to my research material. I flipped through the first page and started reading.
“Breaching The Vault Of Memory,” read a large heading. I flipped ahead to another marked section. “Mind Reading With Clarity.”
Hmm… I closed the book, got up, and grabbed some notebook paper from my binder. I placed it next to the book and stopped again. I went to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee.
I went back to the book, coffee in hand, and opened it up.
“Basic Tenets: Sensory Spells.”
I started reading, taking a couple notes. Lots of new words. Lots of powerful, powerful new words.
I set it beside Kammeryn’s private notes, hoping I could try to multitask.
“Sympathy Exploitation” was something that caught my eye.
I saw the staple. It was three pages.
I looked at the bulk of the notes. There were easily about twenty pages. Almost none of them had anything to do with the subject of the book. “They weren’t notes on the book,” I then realized. They were just notes. “Clouding The Senses” “Into Insignificance”. A couple of them were like the Alice page. Fully written, complex spells.
I looked back to the book. Although I had the most relevant sections highlighted for me, it was probably an entire book in itself.
I looked back to the notes.
Kammeryn had arranged quite the lineup for me. It was going to be a loooooong night.
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