The next morning, I awoke to the sight of both my parents sleeping at my bedside presumably worried I might not wake up. I looked to book. If casting two spells of conflicting magics was going to redesign my physical body, it should have told me sooner. I got out of bed; a bit feverish but I managed to stand, and my mind cleared after a few seconds. My parents stirred and smiled when they saw me standing beside them.
I broke the equipment orb. I then left to go change in the bathroom into my new armour and brought my new spell focus with me. I undid the disguise spell to see my tattoos. They looked completely different. The yellow and violet lines now twist and turn about each other like snakes constantly at war on my skin. In fact, both lines appear to have scales mouths and eyes. Instead of the serpent consuming its own tail however these are consuming each other's. the red and green markings took on personified forms like murky red monsters fighting green angelic beings on my skin. Truly a remarkable image.
I donned the armour and recast my disguise spell so that my tattoos and armour looked like normal skin and clothes. I disguised the armour to look like the school's uniform because I knew my childhood friend would arrive today. As I went downstairs to breakfast, I pulled out grandfather's grimoire and showed them what needed to happen. "set up this magic circle with these components at the ready for when I return in the attic or we may die in five days."
They nodded and after distributing to them the items made for them, I put the dragon skin cloak in my closet for later and went to school. I saw my childhood friend give the same introduction she did the first time, and I made the same joke I did earlier. And went to go show her around the school. Except this time, the twins weren't in a hive mind with me.
I could tell they were distressed when I left but I had no intention of consoling them now. In fact, book told me exactly how to get them to leave me be if I needed to. There's no longer any risk of them harming me so it doesn't even matter. Book even says their father won't try to kill me as long as I deny the twins lies convincingly enough. Though it may be difficult when they tell him the truth.
There's a spell that can be used to see if someone's telling the truth or not. It's commonly thrown around in mage circles but most people unskilled with magic hardly realize it exists, mostly because it requires no components and all you need to say to activate it is "tell me the truth I'll know if you lie" while convinced the spell would work. It's a fairly easy spell to cast and teach but it is an active spell and needs to be reactivated after every use… but their dad doesn't need to know that.
We skipped the class we were meant to skip and since this evening's events were already done by me, I asked her if she'd rather settle into a club for today or if she'd like to go to the adventurer's guild after school today. She accepted my request and once school was done for the day, I visited the club told them that I was fine and that my unforeseen fall was the result of casting two very contradictory ritual spells both within close proximity of one another and without the magic circle and that they both succeeded.
I handed a little pamphlet with all the information about the first spell she needed before leaving the vice president with words of, "I met an old friend today and would like to spend my evening showing her around town."
I was quickly permitted my leave from club activities for the day and took my friend first back to her house so she could get her dragon materials and then to the guild where she began to commission her dragon scale-mail armour. It took a while for the craftsmen to get all the measurements they needed but we made it back home in time for dinner. The bandits who came that day were left as bloodied messes on the floor like the first time and the magic circle was set up.
"I need you to do me a favour," I said to my old friend. We all began cleaning up the corpses and were done with time to spare, time I used getting my parents and my friend to learn both the mind magic and necrotic spells I knew so I could get them to learn the other spell I had. I used a memory sharing spell to help them understand the spell to the best of their abilities and had them learn to use the necrotic spell first.
They didn't have a lot of time to cast it so I opened all the windows gave the person in the middle of the circle my spell focus to hold and broke the last orb. Once all the components were set, they cast the spell and by some stroke of miracle managed to get it right the first time. Of course, it was mostly due to book telling me when they were ready and forcing them on as they went.
I quickly ducked into my room and pulled out my old mind magic textbook from when I was learning the Perfect Recall spell and let them learn it through the necrotic spell. "I know I asked you to teach it to me sometime, but this is a bit soon isn't it?"
"Trust me you don't want to go into the immediate future without this spell." After they had both spells, I had them step out of the circle and one by one start drinking with me before giving them the Damage Reverse spell. They all gained their tattoos for necrotic mastery at the same time, and I taught them the components for the concealment spell for them as well as the spell from the page in the grimoire.
"This is a lot of magic to be learning in one day my head is swimming"
"Yeah, can't we take a little break?"
"do you want to be basically unkillable or not?" they reluctantly agreed and cast the spell, so everyone had their tattoos concealed all except one. Mine are all except two. On the back of my neck is a very detailed demon fighting an angel. Few if any should recognize the meaning of this, most might mistake it for just being a tattoo I got in the spur of the moment.
That evening my friend slept over at my house and an attempt was made on my life again, this time the knife found in the centre of my assailant looked almost like my tattoos. An intricate design of gold silver bone and tooth. Feathery flowery gothic designs began overlapping with the bony bloody original design and instead of the pommel it used to have it looked like the tattoo on the back of my neck a daemon and an angel frozen in eternal combat. the handle had an intricate overlay of spine and silver with a base of spine and an intricately woven cage of silver with flourishes of metal there it touched the bone
The blade had teeth on the back end as it did before, but the blade was a rune-covered gold with strange words written in the ancient language, a flowery poem was the contents singing praises to God. It almost didn't seem to fit the blade, but it certainly looked amazing. That morning as I pulled the blade from the abdomen of the poor soul that dared try and kill me while he did shatter and float away like dust I could see his soul rise from the ashes and ascend away as if the blade had forgiven him his transgressions.
This confused me a bit and it confused my parents as well, "you uh… wanna get that appraised?"
"definitely"
"right…" I handed them the dagger and they carefully put it in the holy water-soaked cloth again, before taking it to their place of work. That morning when the twins arrived after breakfast to walk to school with me, they linked minds with me and asked their question, 'do you know how we feel about you?'
'I do…'
'why haven't you acted then?'
'there are two reasons' I looked down to where my childhood friend was holding my hand happily as we walked, 'three reasons'
'what is it then?'
'I told you I'm not useless right? My ability I mean?'
'Yeah?'
'It's only useful to me and for the entire time you two have been trying to get by my side except for towards the end I saw myself dying by your hand. Towards the end, I more saw myself dying by your father's hand but since I allowed you both to get close it seems less and less likely for either of you to kill me in a jealous rage. That's the first reason.'
'W-what?' I didn't give them a second to think 'the second reason is that it's very likely people very close to me will die soon and I'd like to keep my distance from you two as I don't know how well you'd be when faced with real combat and have no intention of finding out the hard way,'
'so… you're…'
'and the third reason is that my future looks a lot safer by this girl than by your side.' When I told them this, I lifted the hand she was holding and smiled at her, a gesture she returned. One of the twins made to punch me but I warned her in advance 'I wouldn't do that.' But she did it anyway and hit me square in the jaw. It regenerated much faster this time. Her suffering only lasted for an instant, but it sure seemed intense by the way she reacted. "what did you do to her?"
"I simply warned her about my self-defence passive spells, a warning she ignored"
"then?"
"yes, the reason I was on the floor in agony that day was because of the spell you just suffered the recoil of." They looked at me cautiously now and turned their gaze to the now confused and frightened childhood friend by my side as we broke mental communication and just started talking out loud. "I know what you're thinking, and it'd be a bad idea"
"and why's that?" she asked as she punched her in the gut causing the much slower more drawn-out version of the spell to cause the other twin to suffer in agony on the floor "that's why." Noticing that we two were basically untouchable the twins retreated to the school without us, and we went back to class as if nothing happened.