“Ha ha ha ha!”

Lenora took a deep breath and brushed away a strand of hair falling in her face. “I can't believe your conversations are that unhinged,” she said, ghosts of her raucous laughter still lingering in her words. “It must never be a dull moment with you all.”

“You bet there isn't,” Lily said and took a big gulp of the expensive champagne Lenora had brought along for housewarming.

We were in the sitting room, getting drunk and laughing like idiots. I couldn't tell when we ended up here. But I certainly wasn't complaining.

“Your ability to enjoy a joke like that is commendable,” Smokewell said to Lenora. “I think you'll eventually grow on me.”

“Holy shit, Smokewell just gave a compliment!” I said. “And to a non-magic user!”

“I mean, what can I say? It's hard to resist my charms.” Lenora gave a drunken smile and shrugged. She reached out to scratch the cat behind the ear.

The feline purred and then she glared at the woman. “Don't you dare do that again.”

Lenora chuckled and pulled back after giving Smokewell another scratch. “So you all are on the run from the Inquisition?” she asked.

“Not anymore,” Lily said. “Without going into too many details…let's just say we are now at a stage where we can sign our real names on documents without the government raising their eyebrows in suspicion.”

“So it means, you still aren't out of the woods yet?” Lenora said.

“Yeah, I mean, the Inquisition won't come after us just because we exist now but if we start a business that centres around witchcraft then they have a good reason to,” I said.

“So, you've put a stop on all your practices?” Lenora asked.

“Well, we aren't offering any kind of services anymore,” Lily said. “But we do use witchcraft for the kind of things that make everyday life easier.”

Lenora leaned in curiously. “Oh, like what?”

Before any of us could answer, the ground began to shake. Another earthquake. I rolled my eyes and helped Lenora to her feet. Lily lifted Smokewell in her arms and we stepped out of the house.

“If I give you some flour, eggs and milk, can you turn it into bread?” Lenora asked, still a bit tipsy.

“Yes, but I think anyone can do that. And you don't need witchcraft for that,” Smokewell said.

“If I gave you that piece of brick, can you turn that into gold?” Lenora said.

“First of all, that's not witchcraft, that's transmutation magic that alchemists do,” I said, using old Elsa’s memories. “And secondly, if we could just snap our fingers and turn stones into gold, we would've been living in a bigger house.”

“Can you snap your fingers and turn a person into an animal?” Lenora asked.

“The only person I know who has turned a human into an animal is Madam Smokewell,” Lily said, raising the cat. “But she only did it to herself.”

“And the process was more complicated than snapping fingers,” I said.

“And I didn't literally turn my human form into an animal one, you fools,” Smokewell said. “I transferred my soul from my human body to this one.”

Lenora squinted at us, confused. “Then what can witches do?”

By the time she asked that question the ground had stopped trembling. And while Lily and I were still thinking of an answer for her question, Lenora heaved and puked on the ground, right there on the doorstep.

I braced the woman before she could fall in the puddle of her own vomit. Lily clicked her tongue and let go of the cat. She lunged inside the house to avoid stepping on Lenora’s handiwork on the ground. Then she came back with a glass bottle filled with an orange liquid.

She emptied the bottle on the filth on the ground and then she said, “Mundare.”

And the threshold was spotless once again, as if no one had ever thrown up there. “See Lenora? That's what–” I stopped when I saw the woman had passed out against me.

I sighed and said, “Yeah, that's what witchcraft can do.”

****

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

We put Lenora on the couch in the front, letting her sleep until she woke up with a hangover. I went to check the pantry and it wasn't surprising to find that it was nearly empty. So I made Lily and Smokewell go and get some from the market.

“Why me?” Smokewell said when I told Lily to take the cat with her.

“Because we know you'll just stay in and sleep and eventually you'll get used to staying and sleeping all day,” I said.

“That's the worst excuse–”

“I'll get going, don't worry, Miss Elsa.” Lily hauled the cat off the ground and started on her way out.

I managed to make them leave while I stayed at home because I told them I was going to prepare the beds for everyone. Since when we checked, the mattresses had been stowed away in the closets. And they needed to be dusted before we could use them.

But that was only an excuse. The real reason was that I wanted some privacy for what I wanted to do next.

I pulled out the obsidian key Hopper had given me.

I knew I wouldn't be able to uncover everything I wanted to about this object right away. But I also had been thinking of ways to understand its purpose ever since it came into my possession.

Hopper had said the key was given to him by a ‘voice’ from beyond the veil. I didn't know what the key was supposed to unlock but Hopper told me that since it was supposed to be owned by me, it meant I could figure out how to use it.

I did have a theory that maybe the key allowed me to enter the world beyond the veil. And the only reason I had that theory was because I felt it was old Elsa who had communicated with Hopper and she wanted to see me so she gave me this object that could allow me to pass into that world. Either it would help me get a passage or maybe help me communicate with her. This theory also depended on the fact that old Elsa's soul had gone to the world beyond the veil and not anywhere else.

But I also had another theory which was much less complicated and pointed towards something much more dangerous. The key was a passage towards a trap. And it was someone dangerous who had made Eidolon give me the key. What would this stranger want to do with me, I wasn't sure.

Still I was curious. But since the danger of invading the world beyond the veil was quite real, I had to be more cautious about it.

I had to find out as much as I could about this key and its purpose before I decided to use it how it was supposed to be used. So I set about doing what I'd decided.

****

Old Elsa had been making some milk money from doing divinations for people before the Regulated Practices drama began. So one of things in her possession had been a book named ‘A Fool’s Guide to Divination’.

It talked about several methods of divining things. Methods that involved witchcraft and also methods from other schools of magic. I had been going through the sections of the book for a few days before I finally settled on one.

It was called the ‘Osteodial’ method. It involved building a device that you could use to seek certain answers using divination. I preferred this method because the device was handy, easy to use and it was quick to build.

Witchcraft rituals drew power from a witch's ‘malice’. It was present in a witch's bones since birth. It was what allowed her the capability to perform witchcraft.

Malice could take various forms and made different changes in different witches. Like in Lilian’s case, whose malice was wrath, so her inherent powers centered around physical aggression. It made her stronger than an average human. It was what allowed her to bend steel with bare hands and throw people around like rag dolls.

How a child was born with malice, no one had figured out yet. But this malice was what the common folk called a ‘curse’. And that's where the popular misconception of being cursed led one to being witches came from.

When we returned from Pallport, I'd deliberately dug into all the questions I had come up with over the course of the week. About all the new things I'd learnt and the people I knew and the world I was living in. That's when I managed to learn about malice from old Elsa's memories.

I'd also figured out what old Elsa's (and now my own) malice was. It was knowledge. That's what it was called at least. It had gifted old Elsa with an above average intelligence and a higher speed of understanding concepts and things. That had also explained why I had been able to carry out the liberation and the dismantling ritual so spontaneously.

And that was also the reason why I understood the principle behind the Osteodial just after giving it a single read.

The device had three parts: the base, the substratum, the pointer.

The base and substratum were supposed to be made of materials that were frequently used in rituals of witchcraft. The pointer was the main functional part of the device. Bone of a creature was the ideal material to make a pointer since malice can be infused easily into a bone and charge the device to carry out the divination.

I chose to make the base with the root of the ghost sage tree. We still had some left from when we made the sìth bread. The substratum was going to be the water from the moon pond. Its purpose was to neutralize the flow of malice in the device or else the excess malice would burn the device. And I was going to use one of Yazara's bones to make the pointer.

I chopped about half an inch thick slice of the ghost sage root with my ritual knife and made a small groove on its diameter, dividing the disk. I carved the symbols instructed in the guide on either side of the groove. And another symbol on the lower side of the disk.

Next I pricked my finger with my knife and spread some of my blood on the grooved side of the disk. Then I took a small digit from Yazara's bone and carved one end of it to be sharper than the other. I placed it on top of the disk painted with my blood and then it was time to pour some water from the moon pond.

That’s when something weird happened. Instead of spreading and sliding off the disk, the water seemed to solidify into a kind of jelly. And the golden bone remained fixed in its position.

Once finished, the Osteodial looked like a poorly made sailor's compass with just two directions. But it pretty much resembled the illustration in the guide.

The reason I'd picked the ingredients I had was because the bread crumbs that Smokewell puffed on were made of these same ingredients. And they didn't just allow her a glimpse into the future. But also it allowed her to make use of the world beyond the veil in the process. And Yazara wasn't from the mortal realm. His abyss had been the strongest one I had ever extracted. Which probably meant his bone might bring a much more accurate divination result.

“I hope these factors will help in trying to understand what this key from beyond the veil does,” I muttered as I pulled out the obsidian object from my pocket.

It was time to get some answers.