“To be clear,” Thesa said, looking away from Merijest and hedging her previous statement about becoming a [Witch]. “This would just be temporary until I can put enough [Experience] toward [Fighter] to gain some useful perks. I just think having more spells and stuff might be useful right now.”
When Thesa turned back, Merijest had a big grin on her face. Her canine sharp teeth inches from Thesa's neck. For a moment, Thesa felt true terror. But she saw Merijest’s ruby red irises framed by soft eyes and the fear melted away.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Merijest said, now trying (and failing) to suppress her smile.
Slowly, Thesa nodded. “It’s getting kind of hard to ignore how much you've been looking out for me since you revived me. And I'd like to be more than a dead weight”
“In that case, we should go over some things,” Merijest said. “At first Level, you do not need to make very many hard and fast decisions, but we should review the nature of our relationship as we craft our [Bond].”
Thesa swallowed. “What exactly were you thinking?”
“We just need to decide what goes into the contract,” Merijest said as she flicked her wrist and summoned a sheet of parchment and a quill. “Of course, we can agree to amend or abridge the agreement at any point. It will just require a review of the paperwork.
“The nature of our [Bond] is that I will act as your [Stake]. I agree to let you continue siphoning magic from my [Half-Life Revival] spell in addition to a number of spells and additional boons in accordance with your Level in the [Witch] Class.
“In exchange, you agree to continue helping me to regrow my army, particularly with regard to sapient followers.
“You will also need to adhere to a few tenets related to my domain as a [Deity] of death. First and foremost, protect the dead. This means intervening in attempts to permanently derail the cycle of death.”
“How does that work with me being undead and all?” Thesa asked.
“Raising a corpse here and there is usually fine,” Merijest explained. “Necromancy is all about an honest agreement with the one being raised.”
Thesa had never heard necromancy described so casually.
“And besides, necromancy is always temporary. When the caster dies, all once-raised return to death,” the demoness continued.
Thesa’s stomach gurgled quietly, not for hunger, but for the realization that she was no longer on the ‘eternity in Beautuk’s realm’ track…
“The other tenets are that you must reject illegitimate authority. That’s related to my alignment. And finally keep secret the Dead Tongue,” Merijest concluded.
“What’s the ‘Dead Tongue’?” Thesa asked. Was it that language she’d heard Merijest mutter a few times?
“It's like a secret necromantic language,” Merijest shrugged. “I can teach that to you at some point but it's not really a priority for now. It's more useful at higher levels when you’re trying to get the most out of your Class features.”
Thesa thought it over as she read and reread the contract. She asked, “Can a [Witch]’s contract just be anything?”
“Sure. Business deals, name changes, marriage contracts. Like I said, some things are sort of required because of particular alignment and domain, but otherwise it's all fair game.” Merijest shrugged.
“And who enforces the contract?” Thesa asked. She pictured a magical court for adjudicating [Bond] disagreements.
“The contract enforces itself through its own magic. Technically, a bit of blood and [Mana] from each of us is siphoned into the agreement, creating a Legal Construct. You can't usually see them, but basically if one of us stepped out of line it would hurt,” Merijest said.
Thesa reviewed the contract a hundred more times. She paced the room, tracing her fingers on the strange wallpaper patterns. She felt jittery. This was a big decision.
“If you change your mind and decide you're not comfortable with it, we can just go back to our informal connection. You would lose the perks, but I won't retract the [Half-Life Revival] as long as you are still willing to fulfill your end.”
Thesa nodded. “Can we put that in?”
Merijest shrugged, flicked her wrist again, and the magic quill made an addition.
Thesa and Merijest signed the contract. The magic quill pricked Merijests thumb, then Thesa's. Two droplets of blood (Thesa's red, Merijest's blue like the night-sky) floated into the air between them. The droplets met and swirled into a bubblegum pink and then sank into the parchment of the contract. The parchment crumpled on itself until it was no longer visible.
“Now, the main boons I can grant you at this Level are a [Bound Weapon], a [Minor Familiar], a basic healing spell called [Minor Aid], and a [Curse]. However, I can only grant two of the four options,” Merijest explained. Her power had been diminished by the destruction of her previous army.
The [Minor Familiar] was a no-go. Thesa already thought their party had too many weird little guys in it. She didn't need to conjure another.
She really did not want to take the [Curse] and for a moment, Thesa felt a twinge of guilt that she was still so reticent to accept some things about her [Stake]. Rationalizing, she decided that a [Bound Weapon] would let her shine more in combat. It could be summoned and dismissed at will and did not run the risk of being wrenched away by an opponent. [Minor Aid] would make her more useful if Merijest was hurt again. Part of her thought she would have gone with those options anyway, so why did she feel guilty?
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Merijest nodded at Thesa's choices and directed Thesa to summon her [Bound Weapon]. “The shape of the weapon is beyond either of our choosing.”
Thesa put out her dominant hand while she searched inside herself for the new well of power that would let her summon a weapon. She imagined an ornate sword, something like the holy blade she had wielded for Beautuk, but with different design motifs.
Instead, a swirl of shadowy feathers swarmed and solidified into the shape of a gleaming, maroon halberd. The blade at the end of her new polearm resembled a spade in a deck of cards, or the point at the end of the demoness's tail.
The weapon's resemblance to Merijest's tail actually made Thesa smile. The design displayed a clear connection to her [Stake].
Merijest looked excited too. Her actual tail was slowly swinging back and forth and when she approached her new [Witch] to ‘get a closer look,’ her tail absent-mindedly wrapped around Thesa's torso.
Thesa’s heart leapt and so did her feet as she scrambled away from Merijest, blushing and mumbling something about needing to get a move on.
Merijest sighed, but her cheeks, too, had been dabbed with a dash of pink.
***
image [https://alicepow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/monsters_legalconstruct-1.jpg?]
Legal Construct
Rank: A
Attacks: Judgment
Notes: Legal Constructs can reference one another but without caution will quickly become unyielding and colossal in power.
***
Thesa was almost disappointed that the next [Floor] lacked an obvious use-case for her new abilities. It wasn't that she enjoyed combat, but she needed to get some experience using a halberd. The longer she waited to try it out, the more the prospect of combat would simmer with anticipation and anxiety.
Instead, the next [Floor] was a single square room with a stairwell on either side. The room itself was completely covered in a soft green moss from floor to ceiling. A one foot-wide circle in the center of the room was uncovered, revealing a wooden floor beneath.
Neither Thesa nor Merijest (nor even Merijest's growing list of non-sapient [Familiars]) made the mistake of stepping into the room.
“I don't remember this [Floor] from my way down,” Thesa said. “Is there another part of the [Floor] that's disconnected from here?”
“Imitative Caverns often rearrange while nobody is looking,” Merijest explained. “The lower [Floors] are less likely to have changed because it takes more energy, but as we ascend there will be less and less to recognize.”
Merijest took a loose black feather from her neck, reached it over the moss floor, and dropped it. Slowly. It drifted. Until. Landing. The feather receded into the moss as if swallowed.
Merijest brought her hands together and cast [Freezing Breath] in a line across the floor, revealing a stone floor beneath the moss. The wooden disk in the center of the room was set into the stone like a manhole cover, possibly hiding something beneath. The moss quickly stretched and expanded back over the gap (not including the wooden disk), but with reasonable timing, they could get across.
“What do you think is under that disk?” Merijest asked.
“You're asking me?” Thesa replied.
“How am I supposed to know this one? It’s a brand new [Floor] I've never seen before,” Merijest said.
“I guess I would assume it's either treasure or a bonus trap.” Thesa speculated. “Like, maybe the root of the moss is under there ready to spring a mouth of razor-blade tongues on whoever uncovers it.”
“Sometimes your imagination scares me, and I'm a [High Devil]…”
“At the Convent, they told us to expect the worst in every dungeon,” Thesa shrugged.
“In case you're onto something, let's not have the Three-Eyed Grackle or Chimerblin pick it up,” Merijest concluded.
After some more deliberation, they decided to get across the room first. Then, they could look for a way to lift the wooden disk from a safe distance.
The Three-Eyed Grackle was able to glide across without issue. The Chimerblin, being larger and having a longer wingspan, was less graceful. Its wings fluttered, never fully extending for more than a moment as it made its way through.
Thesa was tasked with carrying the Cow-Dog across right after Merijest finished her spell. The big pup panted and scrambled in her arms as if it were so excited to be held that it couldn’t contain itself from nearly sabotaging Thesa’s grip.
Merijest counted down, “three…two…One!”
With another ray of cold energy, a path was drawn across the moss. Thesa made it across with the clambering Cow-Dog and Merijest followed close behind, contracting her wings to avoid any accidental contact.
Looking back at the wooden disk, Thesa realized she could use her new powers here after all. She reached out a hand to summon her halberd in another swirl of feathers and darkness. Holding the halberd from the very end of the handle, she could almost reach the disk. She would need to lean a bit more and that required a counterweight.
“Merijest, can you grab my arm?” she asked, and the [High Devil] followed. Each gripped the other's forearm with their hand as Thesa leaned out. With her new reach, she slid the blade of the halberd into the small gap between the wooden disk and the stone floor. Then she pulled the handle downward as a lever. It wasn't a very efficient lever, but the disk was not very heavy anyways.
The wooden disk lifted up enough that Thesa could move the halberd deeper under it and get enough leverage to flip it on the moss where it swiftly sank out of existence.
In the hole was a small treasure chest. The halberd would not be able to move the chest out of the hole, but that was for the best. At the slightest poke with Thesa's weapon, the chest sprang to life, revealing the trademark array of fleshy human-like hands reaching up to trap a naive adventurer.
***
image [https://alicepow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/monsters_mimic-1.jpg?]
Mimic
Rank: C
Attacks: Seize
Notes: Has six unique mouths inside and you do not want to see any of them.
***
As Merijest pulled her out of her leaning position, Thesa said, “the Convent implored us to poke every chest with a long stick before approaching. They frequently used [Conjure Image] to show us the slow, gulping swallow of a mimic.” She was feeling a little brash for her smart and successful maneuver. Then realizing how close her upright position was to Merijest, Thesa started to shuffle backward.
“Watch out for the Hundred-Legged Snake.”
“The wha–” Thesa looked down to see the Hundred-Legged Snake, which had apparently hitched a ride on Merijest's back, crawling right behind her leg. Thesa stumbled and nearly fell right into the moss but for Merijest's quick reflexes.
The demoness lifted Thesa like she was weightless, placed her on the floor nearer the stairs, and put herself in between Thesa and the Hundred-Legged Snake.