While hanging around an area for the express purpose of watching teenage girls day seems like a bad call. That was because it is and always will be excluding a very limited number of situations. I just so happened to run into one of them: they were in way over their heads and would not realize it until the water was already in their lungs. They needed someone there when that happened. While I had limited knowledge, read none, of magic, I had something they did not, the ability to download the book into my memory.

My days were filled with doing paperwork, solving small cases involving weak dumb magical creatures, and keeping a cursory eye on the girls. In addition to downloading the spell book they left in sapphire’s room into Mena’s Book. As this was a relatively weak artifact it was taking time, I luckily had the time when they were at school and when they were asleep to absorb the knowledge. I just had to make sure to put the book back where I found it when the owners were around.

The book had three things of note: the mana sleeve technique, the recipe for mana, and assorted knowledge of witchcraft.

The mana sleeve technique involved shaping mana into a sleeve that wrapped around the user granted increased physical abilities. The main difference between this and chi was that it was additive not multiplicative. This made it much worse for those who had strong bodies, but perfect for squishy mages. The technique would work just fine with essence which allowed me to ditch the strength essence ring I had been using for a technique that I could just dedicate a portion of my attention to until I come up with something better. It also allowed me more control of my body.

Next up was my discovery of mana. The final of the primary mixed energies was made from mental and spiritual energy. Its iridescent coloring reflected the inherent property of mana, transmutation. This in addition to the domination concept allowed me to shape essences rapidly provided I had the corresponding essence to get things started.

This also seems like a good time to explain the difference between the mixed energies and abilities fueled by them. The raw energies just did their innate property when utilized. Whereas abilities that were fueled by them did their own thing. Gasoline can burn on its own or it could fuel a car.

For spirit and chi the differences between the two usages tended to blur as the abilities were usually just specific uses of the innate property. Mana was the opposite as you could not really utilize the innate property on its own. Mana was just the fuel used to transform one thing into another guided by one ability or another.

Now none of that mattered to me, but hey maybe it matters to you.

The last of discoveries was witchcraft knowledge that outside knowing how to help or hinder witches had little use to me. The downside to existing outside reality is that the world does not help me with magic, which meant that what worked for other people did not work for me. I had to translate everything others use into my native language. So, while there was some helpful stuff, nothing too game changing.

By the time three weeks passed, the water was already starting to pour in with the girls. Each had gotten so wrapped up in their own situations, they grew apart from one another. They had lost one of the most important things one needed when going down a bad path, an outsider’s perspective.

***

Cassandra was starting to see the effects of the Champion’s Medal, a name he learned from skimming their magic cheat sheet. What the girls did not realize about the talisman was that it was unusually cheap to produce. This reduction in price stemmed from where it got those extra physical and mental attributes. They stemmed not from the production materials, but from draining the user’s surroundings.

This had two very major side effects: the first is that due to its negative effects on others, its dark magic. Which when used without care darkens the soul and lowers inhibitions. The second stems from an intentional property of the medal, it also takes in the “competitor’s” pride and aggression to literally suck the motivation of them and give it to the user to push them onward. These two effects compound off each other making Cassandra a landmine just waiting for someone to set her off.

The person who had the misfortune of proverbially stepping on said mine was the star field hockey player on Cassandra’s rival team, Missy. You see Missy had enough aggression and vitality to stave off the effects of Cassandra’s medal for most of the game. She had spent said time showing Cassandra up. This culminated in Missy tackling her. Cassandra proceeded to get up and attempt to cave the young woman’s skull in with her stick. The only reason she failed was that both teams saw what was about to happen and held her back in time. With time Cassandra cooled off and realized what she had almost done. After her realization, her face turned ghost white, and she ran off the field. When she got home after her impromptu jog she dug through her stuff and found the business card she had been given all those weeks ago.

Stolen novel; please report.

When she dialed the number, I, due to keeping an eye on the situation, was ready to pick up right away and told her to meet me in the Dim Diner to talk about the situation.

***

Sapphire had a seed of darkness implanted in her soul. These were quite common when beginners worked with curses as they did not learn that while emotions strengthen curses, they also infect those very emotions. This problem is easily solved by even the most basic of purification rituals that most are taught to perform on themselves and their workspace after working with magic to prevent earlier work from contaminating later projects and prevent long term buildup of effects. This is especially true for dark magic as it’s particularly contaminating.

They can also be resolved naturally when they’re as small as hers by the natural release of emotions. Unfortunately, the young woman learned early on in life that anger and/or tears won’t help her and will only make her situation worse. As a result, she naturally bottles up her emotions, which is unhealthy in the best of circumstances, but is especially troubling when a seed of darkness is placed in said bottle.

The seed fed on all those years of fear, hatred, and sadness. It blossomed within her and started to skew her perceptions of reality. It turned everything darker in her eyes. It turned accidents into deliberate malevolence. This nearly caused a fight when a classmate accidentally spilled their juice on her shoes. It turned her friends’ preoccupation with their own situations into betrayals, leading her to ignore their own troubles. It blinded her to the fact that helping them would leave them open to help her. Where once she saw the world as full of potential allies and friends, she now saw it as cold, dark, and callous which lead to further isolation.

It turned all those years of repressed emotions to venom in her soul just waiting for the chance to be injected into another’s veins. That venom slowly led her down a path she would never have otherwise ventured. It started with seeing her father flinch when she passed him in the hallway at home. When she saw that she could almost swear she heard her world view shatter. She truly looked at her father for the first time in what seemed like her entire life. She was disgusted with what she saw in both him and her former self. He was unshaven, unwashed, unkempt, and a small man in every meaning of the term. She could not believe her former self was ever afraid of the man.

This revelation led her to insults and intimidation. What used to be her chores had turned into his. What used to be her having to carefully watch every step in her own home turned into him having to. Where once she had been torn down at every opportunity, it had become his time to experience that.

This reached a boiling point the night of the big game.

Sapphire had decided to skip watching her friend’s triumph as she no longer saw her as such. What set her off was the fact that her father spilled a glass of water at the dinner table. Unluckily for everyone involved, there was no one there to hold her back this time. What started as a slap had turned into a beating. Which led to her taking out all her rage in the form of repeatedly stomping the man while he was down.

When she looked down at him cowering while having blood run down his face, she saw her former self. This moment could have gone two ways: she could have taken out her disgust in her former self like her father had taken out his when he saw his own weakness reflected in her or she could have self-reflected and realize what she had done, what she had become. She chose in that moment to grasp the goodness in her heart instead of the venom that had infested it. In that moment the seed of darkness that had previously bloomed withered away leaving in its place a confused and scared little girl.

She immediately ran to the bathroom and started vomiting in the toilet. After she cleaned herself up as best as she could, ran to pick up her phone, and looked at the picture she happened to take of that FBI agent’s business card before chucking it what felt like a lifetime ago. When she dialed said number, he told her where he was headed and asked her to meet him there.

Current Equipment:

Head:

[The Black Wasp Jackal’s Face]

Earrings:

[]

Necklace:

[The Energy Baron’s Stomach]

Clothes:

[]

Rings:

[The Mentalism Ring]

[Succubus’ Kiss]

[Mena’s Book]

Bracelets:

[]

Shoes:

[Cement Shoes]

Armaments:

[Weaver’s First Armament]

[Sense Cane]

[Holy Straight Razor]

Storage:

[Various Essences]

[Chi Organ]

[Spirit Shards]

[Various Murder Weapons]

[Green Thumb]

[Glass Eye]