Chapter 33: Saturday, Feb 19, Part II
You walk into your apartment and set down your bag like you would normally. After wandering a bit you stop and mutter, "What the hell is that noise?". Some similar moving around and you 'start noticing' things out of place. You give it another minute or so before you 'find' the first bug.
Your playacted anger is loud and vehement as you find the various bugs and crush them (really, you just remove the batteries). You do set up the security cam to upload snapshots of your door opening to you, as you're not sure if Coil will bother sending someone out immediately or not. Audio logs were grabbed based on relevance of information, and who knows where you rate on that list.
Even though you know that the apartment is safe, when Crystal and Amy arrive you let them know what was found and do the cooking there, but you all adjourn to your lair for the actual eating and discussion.
You transfigure a small circular table for a more intimate experience as you dish up dinner and look at your tablemates. "Alright ladies, lemme have it."
The cousins share a look before Amy starts. "So, what's up with the wand thing?"
Pulling your wand and rolling it through your fingers you hum. "I needed it to make magic work at first. Now I can do most things without it, but it seems to assist with detail work, like glasses help to focus so people can see."
Crystal cuts in. "So other than teleporting and healing and stuff, what other things have you come up with?"
"Well, one of the things I had done originally was figure out warding—you know, putting up a barrier that would do things. That's actually how I knew someone was breaking in to the apartment, I had a ward up that told me someone was trying to get in, so I watched what they did and where they put things. I'm probably going to put up stronger things that won't let people through in the future—wait, that reminds me of something." You digress into an explanation of 'squib' and 'nonmagical' before showing the girls how you create a small ward stone with a muggle-repelling ward. It ends up not affecting either squib, although both of them can feel a vague 'go away' or 'I shouldn't be here' feeling, it's very minor. You'll need to use general repelling wards rather than rely on muggle-repellers to get everyone it seems.
"While we're testing stuff, I've figured out how to enchant things with something I'm calling a 'portkey'. It'll yank you from wherever you are to a pre-programmed point. If you're willing I'll add that to your anklet and necklace so you can get here as an emergency escape plan. Ooh, also a second portkey phrase that dumps you at the Pelham house so you're not stuck here."
The girls come up with emergency phrases and you test with Amy's first, then pop Crystal to her dorm room and perform a sweep of the place for bugs using Dave's knowledge before hopping back. (It seems clean, luckily.)
You arrive back in your main lair room to find yourself alone, Crystal joining you after a moment. "Uh, Amy?"
The healer comes out with your athame in her hands. "Are you sacrificing people to Satan?"
Hurrying forward, you wince and make sure she hasn't stabbed herself. "Okay, let me explain what I call ritual magic…."
One explanation later and you have two pairs of wide eyes staring at you. "You can give people powers?"
"Hypothetically," you emphasize, holding your hands out. "I've only done one ritual and all it did was make me feel like I had done a brisk spring cleaning on my brain. While I think all of it will work, I'm leery of just trying it on someone before I test it on myself first."
Amy sighs and rests her head against her cousin's. "Why is he such an idiot, Crys?"
Crystal furrows her brow. "Why d'you think he's an idiot?"
"Because he's talking about doing this crazy hardcore magic shit with no one around to make sure he's okay!" the brunette rants before grabbing your shoulders and speaking to you slowly like you're a small child. "Please do not do things like this without someone who could at least get help if something goes wrong." There's an underlying worry in her tone that makes you think she'd consider it a personal failing if you were hurt and she wasn't around.
"No promises Ames—I'm doing this in my spare time during the week and stuff, I'm not going to be pulling you or Crystal out of school so I can test things. Besides, once I do a ritual myself I can work on making it work for others, not the other way around."
Amy turns and puts her hands on her hips. "How about we do the cleansing thing to see what it's like? Either all three of us, or you and one of us while the other watches. It's safe, right?"
You nod, "Yeah, it's totally safe. One issue though—" you summon the robes from the ritual room and hold them out to the girls, "—it's these or naked."
Holding the robe up to the light Amy gulps nervously. "It kinda looks like it's naked either way." She rolls her eyes to you. "Are you serious?"
"Totally serious. I did the ritual naked, wearing clothes felt like things would go badly, and as much as you seem to think I'm crazy and doing demon summoning or whatever, I'm following my gut on things like this."
"Uh-huh. Crystal? Crystal!"
Your girlfriend has shucked off her clothes and is in the process of putting the robe on, although you can see the silhouette of her toned body easily through the thin fabric. "I wouldn't mind the naked thing, but let's use the robes." She wraps an arm around Amy's shoulders and guides her into the area you've partitioned off for your bed, so you shrug and switch your clothes out for the robe.
Crystal and Amy take a couple of minutes to return, and when they do Amy is all but hiding behind her cousin. Even still, you can see her peeking around at you, and the robes are sheer enough that you can see the smattering of dark freckles on her face continue down onto her shoulders and cleavage.
You do your best to project professionalism even though you have two incredibly sexy women in effectively nothing in front of you and you're about to doing weird magic. Keeping your eyes on theirs you explain exactly what's going to happen, step by step. Rather than do three individual rituals, you're going to do the same one you did earlier in the week, albeit with the layout slightly differently. Assuming the blood doesn't freak them out too much you'll work on the separate rituals in one thing part in the future, after they've gotten some experience with the language.
The layout this time has the three of you equidistant as an upside-down triangle inside the ritual circle itself, with the silver bowls set up as a regular triangle around you. With a cautioning look towards the ladies not to interfere until you tell them it's okay, you slice your wrist and bleed into the bowl. Crystal manages to contain herself, but Amy's indrawn breath is loud in the otherwise silent space. You flick your eyes over to her and her hands are curled into fists like she's barely restraining herself from lunging at you to heal you.
Once you invoke the reagents and have the purple clouds above you you step into the center of the circle and gesture them to join you. Both seem to be a little in awe of the roiling purified magic above them. "Ready?" They both give you firm nods, and you unleash the cleansing magic and feel the calm as it pours down over you.
You keep your attention on Amy and see tension and stress almost boil away from her frame, her shoulders raising. Before the first drops of magic finish trailing down her body she's crying, although her wide smile tells you they're happy tears. Catching Crystal's attention you both step up to the shorter brunette and fold her into an embrace between you. Amy buries her head in your chest for a moment and squeezes you tight before turning and looking up at her taller cousin, taking her cheeks in her hands, and kissing her chastely. She murmurs something to Crystal that is lost in the patter of the magical rain around you before turning back to you and drawing you down to her and kissing you as well. There's no desire and no passion in the kiss—instead it is soft and sweet, with just the faintest promise held within it.
"Thank you," she whispers against your lips.
The three of you stand in the cleansing rain for some time, holding each other and exchanging little words of care and affection. Both parahumans look like something has been lifted from their shoulders, Amy much more than Crystal. When you finally dismiss the magic you don't feel nearly as drained as the first time, perhaps because you didn't feed as much of the excess magic to the rune circle.
Once the ritual is completed, you peek inside Amy's mind and find that the gnawing emptiness that so worried you is, if not gone, then no longer so empty. This ritual didn't cure years of exposure to Vicky's unwitting Mastering, nor did it magically put a girl who had been feeling nothing back on a totally even keel, but she is now feeling. Feeling fondness for you and her cousin, a slowly growing arousal, and even better, a bit of happiness and contentment with life.
Despite not feeling tired, the three of you end up lounging on the large bed you keep in your lair. Amy has become much more touchy-feely, even if you get the impression that she's not quite ready to make her first real kiss with you part of a threesome. You and Crystal on the other hand have been keeping the curvy little healer within arms reach if not actual skin contact of one or both of you since you changed back into regular clothes.
"So are you gonna explain how you're speaking some weird-sounding language?"
"It felt right to say. I did some searching online for a couple of the words and after a lot of guessing, I think I'm somehow speaking Proto-Indo-European. Like, no one's putting up videos of how to speak it, but it seems like it might match up. I don't know enough of the international phonetic alphabet to tell you if I'm actually right, though."
Amy looks like she's going to follow up with another question, shrugs, then lays her head in your lap. "Whatever, don't care. I'm interested in the Brute rating, honestly."
"I'd—we'd," you correct after they look at you, "have to test how much armoring you get. I'm feeling like it'd stop handgun fire, but I'm not completely certain of that."
"Even if it made us ten percent more damage resistant, that's ten percent more than we have now, you know," your girlfriend points out reasonably.
"Point. I'd still prefer to do it first and then do a trial with one of you, and from what I'm gathering something like that will knock you on your proverbial ass—like you'd still be able to do stuff, but even if it turns out perfectly fine for me, I'm not going to be up to do another one for a couple of days."
"We trust you not to screw it up, James. Could we all do this protection ritual together?"
"Yeah, but expect it to take like three hours or so, then we're probably going to want to nap for a bit afterwards. Fitting it in tomorrow might not be doable; we'd have to find the reagents, then there's the runes, then you'd need to learn the chants." You sigh and run your hands through Amy's hair as Crystal leans against you. "And the robes wouldn't work—the runes would be on your chest and back."
Amy twitches a bit at the revelation that she wouldn't have even the barest shield against her nakedness. "S-still worth it."
It's getting to be late enough that Amy's expected back home, so she and Crystal are going to test their portkeys again. Crystal kisses you and tells you she'll see you in a hour or so before winking and leaning forwards to whisper in your ear. "She's probably gonna try and kiss you, show her how you really do it."
A quick blast of legilimency tells you only that Crystal and Amy have come to some kind of agreement that you're gonna want the details of later, but your girlfriend steps back and portkeys away to her parents' house and you turn to see a shy Amy shifting from foot to foot and staring at the ground trying to warm up her sudden case of cold feet. She won't be trying anything on her own.
Stepping up and wrapping your arms around the short healer, you just let her acclimate to your presence for a moment before moving back just enough that you can look down and tilt her face up. Her dark brown eyes meet yours for just a split second before flicking around to take in the rest of your face, while your own gaze is drawn to the sliver of pink tongue that sneaks out to wet her lips.
With one hand around her waist you bring the other up to brush against her choker as you slide it back to cup the back of her head. At the first brush of your lips on hers she gives a shuddery sigh and brings her arms up to cradle your head. You draw her up to you and she wraps a leg around yours as you deepen your kiss, flicking your tongue against her lips. Her mouth opens and Amy's own sweet tongue tangles with yours as you gladly sink into each other's embrace.
When you finally separate Amy is flushed and breathing hard but can't stop smiling at you. You kiss that beautiful smile and then again on her nose, getting a giggle. She pulls you down in a mirror of the kiss from the ritual, but this one is all desire and passion before she steps back and caresses the choker that marks her neck before whispering her command phrase and disappearing.