Southside Coven: Path To Power (Pt. 3)

--- Jon ---

While part of him was tempted to work on his own cut, or at least the first half of it, he got the distinct impression that Artemis would be significantly easier to work with if they started with one of the other girls first. And while he’d like to believe he was a bit closer to Audrey than Val, given how he’d worked with her more (and the fact she doesn’t have a Demon following her around), he also knew that Audrey was strictly against anything other than selling the Demon arm.

Which is why, “We should start with Val’s cut.”

“Val?” Artemis asked, before giving him a look he couldn’t quite decipher. “Why her?”

He frowned, his tired mind just a touch confused by the question .“Uh, well, Audrey isn’t really interested in this unless we sell the arm off and, uh… I figure you might have some idea of what Val would actually like.”

“Right, being paranoid…” The other teen sighed to herself before shaking her head. “Yeah, Val is probably the better of the two for us to start with.”

“That’s what I was thinking…” He nodded slowly, deciding (it’s not worth questioning). “So, uh, any idea for that beyond finger snacks?”

“Finger snacks?” Artemis repeated.

Too tired to censor himself he explained, “Yeah, it’s the Horror’s arm -or hand- so… finger snacks.” He lightly bit one of his own fingers for emphasis.

Artemis let out a sound somewhere between amused and surprised before shaking her head. “Well, that’s, uh, that’s an option. Albeit a lazy one.”

“Uh, how about another talisman then?” He suggested, raising his own talisman into the air. “I know I only have the one, but one of my mentors keeps a small vault of backups with different purposes.”

“Hmm, that’s a good idea.” The Arcane teen nodded, thinking it over. “It’s definitely not something I’ve dabbled with given how I don’t need one so it’s a new venue of research. Though I’m not sure how interested Val will be in it given how her own amulet converts ambient Fear into Anima, which is a little too synchronized with the Scarecrow to simply trade for another amulet.”

“And she can’t carry two because of that whole uh, what’s it called…” He frowned, trying to force his tired mind to remember.

“Anima Assimilation and Destabilization?” Artemis offered. “It’s the phenomenon where two Anima signatures merge and rather than synchronizing for an amplifying effect like many Arcane using foci, it instead causes the two to interfere with each other and often leads to any spells cast more or less exploding with twice as much Anima as would typically be used.”

“Uh, yeah, that.” He nodded.

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“Well, while she can’t use two amulets, having a back-up could still be useful even if only in niche situations.” Artemis assured him. “At the very least she’d appreciate it if we could bind something useful into the talisman, but… I’d need to do a bit more research into how to do that.”

“If worse comes to worst, I can always ask my mentor how she made mine while she’s in town.” He shrugged, before thinking of something else. “Alternatively, instead of making a new talisman, why not use the Horror’s arm to create an… atmospheric anima engine of some kind. I know I’ve got one, but we could probably create a steady atmosphere of fear for her Talisman and the Scarecrow to feed on.”

“That’s… doable, but we’d need to figure out how to limit or restrict the effect somehow.” Artemis warned him. “After all, I doubt she’d thank us for giving Elena nightmares given how she treated the Scarecrow when he tried that.”

“Yeah, we’d definitely have to figure that out.” He agreed, not liking the idea of scaring a kid on the level he was sure the Arm would.

“But if we’re restricting the arm’s fear effect already we could probably work out a way to… weaponize it.” Artemis grimaced, before shaking her head. “Though if we do something in that direction I think it’d be more interesting to use any concept of the Horror other than fear, given how the Scarecrow is essentially a weaponized fear elemental.”

“True, Duplication, Shadow, Seal, and Minion would all be less redundant.” He nodded, his mind drifting briefly to how he’d use each for his own kit.

“The would.” Artemis nodded thoughtfully. “Though I don’t think Minion would work as well for her given how the Scarecrow’s Contract has an… exclusivity clause of sorts. Last thing we need is for that to invalidate whatever we give her.”

“Something to keep in mind.” He admitted, since he had a vague idea of how that conceptual rule would assert itself, which is also why he felt the need to point out that, “We might be able to work around that rule if we make him the [Minion] in question and have the arm branch out from there.”

“Thus allowing us to hijack their conceptual tether and use whatever we create on the Scarecrow himself rather than having Val simply use any old Spell Engine.” Artemis grinned. “That could be very interesting, especially given what it could reveal about both Demons and the Arcane Nexus’s Summoning System. I should be able to easily ask Miss Edme if that’s possible, given how Contracting is one of her specialties.”

“Any other ideas?” He asked after a moment of letting her brainstorm. “That’s about all I can come up with on my end without a decent night’s sleep and a reference book or two in front of me.”

Artemis blinked before looking at him and grimacing. “Ah, yes, you, uh, you do look like you could use some sleep.”

“Yeah, weird thing about fairy healing is that while it does a fantastic job of healing short term exhaustion, like with adrenaline once it wears off you tend to crash.” He yawned.

“Ah, yes, that.” Artemis chuckled in bitter sympathy. “It turns out in order to use magic to heal brain exhaustion you need to decelerate neural activity at the same time, while healing physical injuries tends to result in accelerating neural activity due to the Anima hitting your nerves. Found that out after trying to abuse a healing spell for late night studying a few too many nights in a row.”

“Yeah, that… sounds about right.” He agreed, not pointing out that at a certain point Pix refuses to heal him unless he goes to sleep and instead begins zapping him.

“Right, well…” Artemis checked her phone before grimacing. “You’ve only got about fifteen minutes on this lunch break so uh, unless you intend to cut next class you aren’t going to get much rest.”

“I’m aware.” He sighed, crossing his arms as he laid his head on the desk. “Probably should’ve just called in sick but… didn’t want to worry anyone.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Artemis admitted, before shortly being followed by the sound of the classroom door closing. Only to be immediately reopened as the lights overhead clicked off.