Plum Parrot

FWFW 3 - 76

Added 2022-10-03 10:53:43 +0000 UTC

Olivia sat in her trap, and she seethed. Had she really been so stupid, so naive? Thinking back to Carlu’s charming banter when they’d first met, she still couldn’t believe that he’d been helping to kill innocent students and Alyss this whole time. An angry sob surged up from her chest when she thought of Alyss and the idea of that evil little shit pretending to investigate her murder scene.

“Was that the plan?” she hissed, “To keep me emotionally involved and stupid?” Olivia rapped her knuckles against the blue metal pattern beneath her. “Wonder who made you,” she said, though she knew she’d find out soon enough. She looked at her Core for the hundredth time and saw that her fire and air affinities were slowly recharging, despite the cage.

She’d avoided casting more spells, not wanting to have herself drained again. Still, a certain part of her, perhaps the raging primal elemental within her, wanted to unleash everything she had, channeling all of her Energies into a singular, massive, Elemental Bomb and using the Crown of Nightmarch to amplify it. Could the trap stop that? Was it possible she might overwhelm it?

One thing kept her from acting, though—Carlu had seen her use the crown. He had an idea of what she was capable of doing. Would he so confidently walk away if there was a chance she could overpower his trap? He probably wanted her to do so, emptying herself and making it easier to beat her and drag her somewhere else. Growling with frustration, Olivia looked through her storage ring for anything that might allow her to escape, and she spied the three books she’d taken from the library.

Sitting in the dim glow of her lamp, Olivia pulled the books out of her ring and read the titles aloud, her voice in the dark, deep pit bringing her some comfort, “Teneshel’s Theories on Agricultural Workings. Oh brother,” Olivia slipped the book back into her storage ring. “Borlim-dak’s Better Baking. God, I’m an idiot.” Olivia angrily stored it away. Then she, with very little hope, picked up the final text.

The book was thin but heavy, and it made her fingers itch as strange Energy crawled over her skin. It was the first book she’d picked, and that feeling was why she’d stopped and taken it in the first place. “The Book of Tveklis.” She looked carefully at the book, noting the thick layer of dust on the top—this text hadn’t been pulled from the shelves in a very long time. It was bound in leather, stained black. Upon closer inspection, she saw that the title had been added after the binding, written on paler leather and stitched with red thread to the original. “So you didn’t use to have a title, hmm?”

Olivia opened the cover, saw a blank page, turned it, and stared at the incomprehensible text on the next page. “Goddamn it!” she hissed. “Of course, you’re written in a non-System language!” Something about the symbols was familiar to her, though, and Olivia hissed in sudden recognition, slamming the book shut. To be sure, she pulled the tapestry that Bronwyn had given her, what seemed like a hundred years ago, from the Yovashi lair. Sure enough, the runes were similar, and some of them were definitely repeated in the text.

“Of course. Tveklis. It’s a Yovashi name. A Yovashi spell book at Fainhallow?” Olivia frowned and put the tapestry away, then she picked up the book and opened it on her lap. Something about the itchy, tingling feeling it gave her was intriguing, and though she couldn’t understand it, she stared at the runes and symbols, wondering if there was some way she could make sense of them. Nothing happened, though, and she closed the book, looking at its cover where the title had been stitched.

She absently plucked at the red thread holding the title in place, and she felt the tingling sensation intensify. Curious, she held the palm of her hand over the stitched-on title and felt the tingling itch intensify. “Interesting . . .” she breathed, pulling a knife from her ring and carefully prying the stitched thread out of its holes. As she began to free the square of leather from the book, she caught glimpses of blue and green stitching, and she hurried, cutting away the rest of the thread and pulling off the pale leather.

Beneath the stitched-on leather was the original title of the book. The strange, Yovashi symbols were stitched with green and blue metallic thread, and though Olivia couldn’t understand them, she could feel the Energy emanating from them—it was unlike anything she’d felt before; no attunement she’d been exposed to matched the weird, tingling pressure emanating from those threads. There were seven stitched runes, and though Olivia was frustrated at her inability to read them, she felt her eyes drawn to the perfect symmetry of their design and how they each seemed to flow into the next.

Olivia felt the pressure of knowing the killer could show up at any moment, but something about the book had captured her attention, pushing such concerns into a small corner at the back of her mind. “What are you . . .” she breathed, tracing the runes with her fingertip, and then she felt another surge of the strange Energy, and she pulled her finger away. As she watched, the runes seemed to lift from the book, flowing into each other and toward her. Olivia panicked and flipped the book over, clamping her eyes shut.

She realized that the book wasn’t meant to be read by normal means. It was like the self-learning spell scrolls and tomes people could craft and that the System tended to utilize for rewards. The triggering runes had been the title, and whoever had covered them had either known that and covered them as a precaution or had done so inadvertently because they took a while to start to work. “Well, I’m assuming a lot,” Olivia said, opening her eyes to look at the blank back of the book.

Was she desperate enough to let an unknown spell tome, likely crafted by a Yovashi, fill her brain with information? Would more spells help in her situation? Carlu had said the ward circle had been “tailored” to block her abilities. The only way they could be sure of that is if it were made to contain all of her affinities. Olivia knew it worked to absorb plasma, so it was a thorough job, blocking even her meta-elements. What if the book gave her another option? What about the pure Energy at the center of her Core?

Olivia pointed a palm at the circle and built the pattern for Fiery Burst in her channel, but she fed it pure Energy instead of her fire-attuned Energy. She felt the spell was ready, and she pushed it forth. The Energy surged out of her palm and was instantly absorbed by the circle, along with all of her pure Energy. As a System message appeared in her view, she sagged forward, weak and nauseous from the sudden drain:

***Congratulations! You have learned the spell: Energy Burst - Basic***

***Energy Burst - Basic: You conjure forth a destructive beam of pure Energy. Energy cost: 100, Cooldown: Minimal.***

“Ugh, so it blocks all of my affinities, including pure Energy. I suppose that would be obvious.” At first, Olivia wondered how they’d learned about all her affinities, but then she laughed, remembering her display in the auditorium, her practice sessions in class, and even her conversations with other students with elemental affinities. No, it wouldn’t be hard for any sort of investigator to learn about her affinities. Who knew what Carlu learned when he studied her with those lenses of his?

Again, Olivia contemplated the back of the Yovashi book. Was she out of options? Was this her only hope? Should she just wait and see what the killer wants? Maybe she’d find an opportunity to escape if he moved her. “Or he might come in her, overpower my magic-less ass, and do God-knows-what to me.” Olivia was good at many things, but coping with feeling helpless wasn’t one of them. She picked up the book, flipped it over, and stared at the strange metallic runes, waiting for them to do their thing.

When the runes failed to start shifting around and flowing toward her, Olivia had a momentary panic—had she wasted the magic? She almost threw the book in frustration after five minutes of staring, but then she remembered how she’d traced the runes with her finger, and she quickly did it again, being sure to mimic the way she’d done it before, concentrating on the strange Energy signature and how it made her flesh tingle. Sure enough, as she finished tracing the last rune, they seemed to shimmer and flow into each other, lifting into the air. Olivia reasoned that the runes weren’t actually lifting into the air—just their image was, but it was all the same to Olivia’s eyes.

As the runes floated toward her, Olivia forced her eyes to stay open, and when the image of the strange symbols was all she could see, she felt that tingling, almost itchy Energy pass into her, and everything went dark. At first, Olivia wondered if she’d passed out, but a strange, echoing, and harsh voice sounded in her mind, so loud that any other thought was banished, “MIND COMPATIBILITY: NINETY-TWO PERCENT.”

Olivia tried to say something but couldn’t feel her mouth or hear herself. The strange tingling spread through her pathways, though, and it seemed she was being examined. Again the booming voice rang out in her mind, “SUPERIOR AFFINITY AND ABOVE AVERAGE CORE. NO MIND ATTUNEMENT OR AFFINITY. SELECT AN AFFINITY TO REPLACE: FIRE, WATER, AIR, EARTH, NON-ATTUNED.”

“Um,” Olivia could hear herself this time, though it seemed she was speaking in her head, not physically. “I don’t wish to replace an affinity.”

“SELECT AN AFFINITY TO REPLACE: FIRE, WATER, AIR, EARTH, NON-ATTUNED.” It almost felt like she was speaking to a computer program. Was it capable of nuance? Could she cancel this process?

“Help,” she tried.