Chapter 34: Magical Progress And Conclusions

--- Coraline Hawkins ---

“Alright, I think you’ve got the hang of moving your magic around.” Her dad told her after her third time of casting the Starlit Nightlight spell by herself. “Meaning it’s time for you to try something a little more complex.”

“What have you got?” She smiled, not really worried since she knew that children usually learned the Starlit Nightlight as their first spell. (So an almost-adult should be able to do significantly more.)

“Right, so you remember your affinities?” Her dad checked as he placed the plant pot in the middle of the table before continuing when she nodded. “Okay, well one of the easiest forms of magic to learn is raw conceptual projection. It’s… expensive as far as cost to effect goes, but it’s also a good starting point for conceptual magic since the next step is controlling the projected affinity.”

She knew all of this, but decided to let her dad lead the lesson (like a good little girl…)

“Now we have this pot here with a… half dead plant.” (You mean a sin against nature.) She knew her dad had the opposite of a green thumb but seeing it in front of her really irritated her for some reason. “Your job is to use your Nature affinity or your Life affinity to heal this plant with your magic. As long as you don’t use your uh, Death affinity this should be easy for you.”

She pretended not to notice how he grimaced when he said ‘Death’ knowing her affinity had always bothered him more than it had her. (Which is stupid, Death is a natural part of the world. Why fear it?)

“Okay.” She inhaled deeply, before exhaling just as deeply as she began to pull on the cool warmth coming from her necklace. “I’ve got my magic… Now how do I use just a single affinity? The books weren’t very… practical on that part.”

“It’s… it’s mostly about focusing on what you want the magic to do. Given how your magic already leans towards life and nature all you need to do is focus on those ideas while willing your magic forward.” Her dad tried to explain. “It won’t be perfect but the Anima already knows what to do more or less, you’ve just got to sort of nudge it to get it going.”

“Right.” She nodded, before closing her eyes and thinking about the plant, picturing it slowly regaining a healthy color before going on to fully bloom into itself. A process she’d seen first hand over the course of several weeks the last time she’d had to manually revive a plant someone had nearly killed.

(Alright, this is something I can do.)

With the entire process in mind she began to once more draw the cool warmth into her chest before moving up her shoulders and down her arms. Only unlike last time when the magic reached the wreath wrapped around her arm it didn’t slow down and instead sped up flowing far easier than any of her previous attempts to use the magic.

Still, regardless of how much easier it was to work her magic for this she didn’t stop, she continued to push her magic forward. The plant in her mind bloomed even further as it took on a form far beyond what the plant would normally grow into as other flowers found themselves blending into the bouquet.

“Uh, Cory…” Her dad started, his voice sounding odd. “It’s, uh, you can uh, stop now… I, I don’t think it grow much more…”

She slowly cut off her magic before letting her eyes blink open and finding that, (yeah, I, I don’t think it can grow much more…) (Or… we could try pushing it a little further…)

The small half-dead plant had grown far beyond a simple return to health or even a full bloom of itself.

What should have been a small plant she could hold in hands had grown into a veritable brush of foliage almost as big as her, with vines stretching out from the bottom of the bot before wrapping all around the living room table.

From the other side of the plant her dad nervously leaned to the side to see her, “That, uh, that went a little better than I’d been expecting.”

“Y-yeah…” She couldn’t help but agree, her fingers subconsciously drifting to the wreath wrapped around her arm and just how easily her magic had flowed after hitting it. (Maybe… this isn’t a curse mark after all?)

--- Aurelio Hermenez ---

Once he was a little less thirsty he turned his attention back to Geraldine, the shadow still looking like an actual person. “So, uh… you’ve uh, you’ve got a body now?”

“So it seems.” Jerry nodded, picking something up only for it to slip through her fingers, causing the ghost to develop a thoughtful look as she admitted, “It doesn’t seem to be a real body however.”

“Then uh, what is it?” Because it looked like a (really sexy) body to him.

Jerry gave him a little smirk, as he was reminded that she could read his thoughts.

“I… am not going to apologize.”

Jerry’s smirk grew fangs. “I don’t expect you to, you’re only thinking the truth after all.”

He kept his mouth shut and took another sip of his water.

“Anyway, this seems to be a Shadow Construct of sorts rather than a true flesh and blood body. Whatsmore I can feel the power I’m using to hold it all together slowly fading.” Jerry admitted. “Much longer and I’ll return to my more two dimensional self.”

“Uh, is there a way to… avoid that?” Because he’d much rather talk to a beautiful woman than the shadow of one.

“Well given how my current corporeality came from you pushing your built up magic into me, it’s likely that… give me a moment.” Jerry frowned, gaining a look of concentration as black gloves formed on her pale hands before the fingers seemed to extend and retract. “Hmm, yes just as I thought…”

“Mind sharing that thought?” He asked.

“Ah, yes.” Jerry shook her hand out, the shadow gloves fading and leaving her with her normal hands again. “When I was alive I had a set of defensive spells going most of the time, it seems my current form is merely me using your magic to recreate the shell I habitually had active during the last few decades of my life. Honestly, I didn’t even notice I was running the spell in the back of my head.”

Jerry let out a sigh. “Unfortunately, this does point out a flaw or two in my initial construction of my soul box. I seem to have miscalculated the amount of magic it would take to keep my soul anchored, which is why the amount of magic you have after only a fortnight as a vampire -even with my siphoning a fair percentage- is enough to build this body while my own is barely enough to create a shadow on the wall.”

“I see…” Actually, he was only half able to follow but he got the broad strokes that even with her handicapping him he was still growing in power faster than her. “But you said you could use my magic if I give it to you?”

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“Hmm… yes. I seem to have retained most of my skill for the time being.” Jerry nodded. “I just lack the magical capacity to do anything notable without your aid… leaving me even more dependent on you than I’d previously accepted.”

“Well… I’ve got no idea what to do with all this magic so you’re free to take as much as you want.” He assured her, (especially if it means you get to keep that body around.)

Jerry let out a huff of amusement.

“Again, not apologizing.”

Jerry shook her head with a smile. “You’re right, I suppose I should count my blessings that your growing faster than expected and that [Night] leans itself to form construction. I doubt I’d be able to do this much if your growth was normal or we were truly limited to [Shadow] like my Bloodline mistakenly believes.”

He tucked away that ‘faster growth than normal’ thing, curious about it but not overly so since he was apparently a second gen vampire which in most stories automatically put him above later generations in power. Instead he chose to focus on how, “You mentioned something about that earlier, how our affinity is [Night] not [Shadow], uh, what’s the difference between the two?”

Jerry seemed to consider that for a moment. “The two concepts do possess a fair bit of overlap being physical manifestations of darkness, but the difference would be in scale and conceptualization.”

“Uh, conceptualization?” He repeated, pretty sure he knew what that meant but not enough to bet on it.

“Hmm, Shadows have more to do with the self while the Night has more to do with the world itself. This partially ties into the concepts of ‘the shadow self’ and ‘creatures of the night’ or ‘the all consuming night’. Between these factors [Shadow] is better at personal enhancement. finer details, and solid constructs, whereas Night is better at larger scale feats and more lively constructs.” Jerry explained, looking a little miffed as her body began to darken and thin against the wall. “There’s more to it than that such as reactions to light but-”

Jerry’s shadow continued to talk for a moment without letting out any sound as she grew a frustrated look before just stopping altogether.

(Apologies, I was just getting used to vocal chords again over a more telepathic connection.) His personal poltergeist pouted within his mind.

“It’s fine.” Honestly, he wasn’t going to remember half of her lectures tonight so having one cut in half wasn’t that big of a deal. “Is there any way we can make this physical form thing more stable?”

(Beyond increasing your skill with converting and manipulating the magic in your blood, not really.) Jerry’s shadow tapped her chin as she continued to think about it. (There are some things we can do based on the blood you consume but given the circumstances I’d rather you not pick a fight with a dark magic user.)

“Yeah… I’d rather not do that either.” He admitted.

(Then our best solution is to practice and keep practicing for now.) Jerry told him with a firm nod.

--- Miles Kennedy ---

From within one of the crypts a figure lurched out of the shadows and into the light cast by the moon and golden cracks in the sky, revealing a thin half rotted corpse, its flesh and clothes just barely clinging to its frame.

He clung to the angel statue as he forced himself to his feet, trying to get enough feeling back into them that he could run before the undead thing in front of him could reach him. Only to have his heart stall on him again.

(“Ah, ah, boyo ya got to put these things down.”) Kriminel told him as even more undead began to crawl out of the crypts. (“Otherwise they’ll get out and start causin’ all sorts of problems.”)

He inhaled deep when his heart began to beat once more. “How… How the fuck… am I supposed to… do that?”

(“I already told ya, self-possession.”) The Baron reminded him.

He glared at the spirit as he backed away from the slowly forming horde. “I’m not letting you possess me!”

(“Well I don’t have to be the one to possess ya. I just figured ya’d prefer me to some random spirit sticking their hands inside ya.”) Kriminel smiled with a hint of sadism.

“Yeah, and how do I know you’ll give my body back?” He scoffed before stumbling backwards as he tripped over a raised plaque in the ground.

(“Shouldn’t walk backwards dumbass.”) The Baron told him with a shake of his head. (“And I can’t keep in yer body for long. Since yer body is not my body, once ya run out of power I’d be kicked to the curb.”)

Not trusting that for a minute he instead looked around the graveyard in search of anything that could help him dispatch the undead, be it a rock, a stick, or anything.

(“Yer goin’ to be stubborn about this ain’t ya?”) Kriminel sighed, his mental image shaking its head. (“Alright, I told ya when ya signed on I don’t micromanage. If ya can kill ‘em without any help, well consider me impressed, and we can do the next lesson. Now don’t die, I got money ridin’ on yer survival.”)

With his piece said Kriminel’s image disappeared, though even if he couldn’t see him, Miles could still feel The Baron’s eyes on him.

“Fucking asshole.” He cursed, stumbling back onto his feet as he counted almost half a dozen of the undead slowly making their way towards him.

(What do I do, what do I do, what do I do?) He began to panic, knowing that running was even more of a death sentence than trying to fight these things.

His eyes eventually locked onto the angel statue. “Oh, this is going to make the J-man cry…”

With a half formed plan he began circling around the (thankfully slow) undead, trying to get them to bundle up while also staying out of range in case one of them decided to suddenly lunge at him.

After a lot more time and effort than he was comfortable with, he eventually managed to get the undead to sort of bunch up between the two crypts they’d crawled out from. And while it wasn’t enough to really stop them it was enough to buy him time to sprint around and back to the statue.

“Okay… just, just got to figure this out…” He swallowed, before trying to push the statue and finding it wouldn’t budge an inch. “Oh, come on!”

(“Boy, how slow are ya?”) Kriminel commented from the back with no small amount of frustration. (“Ya runnin’ around like a chicken with its head cut off -which is usually pretty funny- but now ya tryin’ to topple a statue. A statue anchored to the ground with what, triple ya weight?”)

“Fuck off.” He told the Baron who dragged him into this mess.

(“Ya really are as stubborn as ya are stupid ain’t ya, ya little bastard?”) Kriminel groaned. (“Just let me possess ya and ya won’t have to desecrate this grave. Which by the way is probably goin’ to piss Brav off. Which I’m okay with but he’ll be an even bigger bitch than Nibo.”)

“I said, fuck off!” He growled once more.

(“Fuck it.”) The Baron told him before going silent once more.

He gave the statue one more shove before looking at the horde once more creeping near him, and forcing himself to admit that (Kriminel was right, this shit isn’t going to work how I want it to…)

Just as he was about to seriously consider giving up and letting Kriminel possess him a chill tore through the air as an annoyed growl seemed to come from behind him.

“Kid, the fuck are you doing?”

He glanced over his shoulder and found a set of golden eyes glaring at him from a large man with slicked back gray hair and a set of scars raking across the left side of his face.

“Um… trying to kill the zombies…” He answered, instinctively knowing the guy in front of him was dangerous.

The man glanced at the undead before pinching the bridge of his nose, as if this was more an extreme annoyance than an actual threat. “Pinche pendejo niño practicando la necromancia…”

Running a hand down his face the man reached out and picked him up with one hand before setting him on the ground. “You stay here, or I’ll kick your ass twice as hard as I’m planning.”

He didn’t have the nerve to argue with the guy who could pick him up and throw him.

“Sólo quería pasar una noche tranquila. ¿Era mucho pedir?” The man mumbled, walking up to the first undead before backhanding it hard enough to snap the thing’s neck and send it toppling to the ground. “¡Pero no, ningún adolescente idiota tiene que arruinar toda mi noche!”

The man sighed, before raising his fists and looking at the remaining undead as they turned their attention onto him. “Let’s get this shit over with.”

Faster than Miles could process, the man blew through the small horde, avoiding each of their blows before countering with his own, a single punch to the head all it took to take each zombie out.

Once all of the dead were once more dead the man brushed his hands off before turning around to face Miles, those golden eyes locking him in place.

“Now, niño, mind telling me why you felt the need to raise the dead?”