D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

--- Lily ---

Scar had ducked her head into the room and thrown a piece of paper with a bunch of runes on it before leaving swiftly. Lily didn’t even get time to ask what the paper was for. It was rather easy to guess of course... but even still. Lily wasn’t CERTAIN and she really wanted to be when it came to Kat’s safety. [Well, why not go to the garbage crate and get some scrap wood or stone to practice on? We’re both assuming that the runes will need to be carved and perhaps filled with some sort of special ink... if you do the carving that’s probably going to make things faster, but also you obviously need practice.]

*That’s not a bad idea actually. Thanks.*

[No problem.] Kat intoned mentally. Deliberately not mentioning that this was a also a great way to distract her girlfriend from being angry at Scar for just bailing on her earlier, even if it was for a good reason. Kat wasn’t hiding the thought... but Lily certainly wasn’t paying full attention to Kat’s background reasoning at the moment.

Lily slipped out of the room, transformed just in case, grabbed a number of stone blocks and then came back. They weren’t all in great shape but Lily just needed the practice. If she needed to add a few of them together to make a decently flat surface for the rune carving then that was acceptable. This was never meant to be a final product after all.

Lily also quickly found that carving stone wasn’t as easy as you’d think. She was strong, and her shadows could become quite sharp. But she also wasn’t an industrial water cutter or something else equally advanced. Even just carving the runes into the surface had the stone cracking quite regularly. Lily needed to venture out to get more stone before she’d even finished one full attempt.

She lost track of time, attempt after attempt Lily made but there was always something wrong. The rock chipped a bit at the end extending the rune further in form then it had to be. The rock itself cracking the entire way through. A simple mistake in the carving, scouring away more rock then necessary making the rune into something it wasn’t. Considering all the issues she had, drawing a perfect circle for the thing was laughably simple. The one time she attempted it... Lily was simply able to form her shadow into the cull circle and cut away at things with it.

The stones broke apart after that, but she was using a collection of them and the breaking was basically expected at this point. Still, it HAD ended up in a perfect circle. So there was that. As long as the surface could hold up to her carving the circle part of things should be sorted... which just left all the other runes that she needed to perfect. Lily pouted at the stone.

Meanwhile, in the background, Kat had enjoyed herself flickering through poses, even occasionally using her water transformation to change out of some of the more awkward ones. Lily hadn’t even noticed all the internal laughter. She’d missed Kat in several strange and even risqué poses, such as when she’d done a handstand... and did nothing to prevent her kimono falling down when she’d done so. Or the time she’d used her tail to hold herself entirely sideways, or when she was pulling her face into silly positions.

Eventually, the fact that Lily hadn’t even noticed stopped being amusing and went right back to boring so Kat decided to relax once again and watch her girlfriend work. It wasn’t proper entertainment for most people but seeing her girlfriend so focused brought a small to Kat’s face. The hardest part wasn’t getting bored, but fighting down the urge to hug her... because trying to hug Lily right now would involve busting her way through several boxes she was told not to touch yet.

Eventually though, Scar did return. "Sorry about that. I was right to be worried. A few tiny things were wrong in the barrier and if I hadn’t fixed them the whole thing would’ve come down in maybe an hour... maybe longer. It’s really hard to tell with stuff like that,"

"What do you mean?" asked Lily as she shook her head and stepped away from her work. Another failure.

"Well, wards don’t fail immediately if you do something wrong. Or well, they tend to fail swiftly if the runes are wrong, but actually carving them properly determines how quickly they break. The closer to the ideal form of a rune the more cleanly the magic flows through them and the slower things break down. Now, because we’re working with a two dimensional surface and, somewhat, natural materials there’s a limit to how perfect we can make them.

"In this case, Brook added a few rather deliberately placed errors, or at least, I suspect they were. The rest are still asleep so I can’t be sure it was her yet. I’m planning to make sure everyone checks everything over to make sure I haven’t missed more," Scar shook her head. "Regardless, what I THINK Brook did was make them all just a bit odd in ways that are hard to notice but likely to cause more damage to the runes in the short term."

"Ah I see... and because the materials aren’t the best the barrier was never going to last long, so shortening that as well makes things really bad," offered Lily.

"Exactly. We were aiming for... maybe a month ideally. With the little changes we’d have been lucky for it to last a full day. The issue is that little imperfections compound you see. They were hard to spot right now, but they’ have gotten more obvious in short order... except if we were too dead to notice nothing could be done, or in the case of a few of them, they were hidden in awkward spots to check so you might not even notice until it’s too late," explained Scar.

"But it’s dealt with now?" asked Lily.

Scar shrugged, "Define dealt with?" Lily gave her a deadpan stare. "Alright fine. I’ve somewhat repaired the damage... but it’s a stopgap fix for most things. Remember, I can’t take down the wards to properly fix them because the poison could get in. Once everyone’s awake and in their suits, we can do something more permanent.

"I HOPE that I’ve fixed things up enough to last for a while but it’s one of the reasons I want everyone to double check things. Now, let’s get to work here. How confident are you in your work?"

"Um... mostly just in the circle honestly. I keep making mistakes," mumbled Lily.

"That’s something at least. Don’t worry too much, this isn’t something that’s meant to last long so having the runes be a bit messy is acceptable, it’s just going to cost a bit more mana," explained Scar.

"Alright," Lily agreed with a nod. With that, the pair got to work. Scar first marked out the spot she wanted them to work with, and then highlighted the area Lily should add the circles. While Lily was doing that, Scar got to work... but it didn’t take Lily long to finish.

"Damn, that’s handy. If you’re confident, start anywhere and I’ll add the ink later," commented Scar.

Lily wasn’t... but she wanted to get Kat out of there as soon as possible so she got working on the things runes she knew... which was really just the simplest one. After the first, Lily glanced over at Scar and almost wasn’t to cry. Despite the fact her lines were quite clean and helped along by her shadow... Scar’s were something else.

Perhaps it was the tool she was using but they were perfectly smoothed and the runes just... there was something special about them. Even before the ink was applied Lily could tell they were magical. It was an odd experience to be sure. Scar was also a lot faster, even without magic to help.

Still, eventually they got the work done, with Scar doing most of it and Lily lamenting her failures. "You did pretty well, don’t worry about it," insisted Scar. Lily didn’t really believe her... but it was time to test things. "Alright Kat, transform into your water form... or no wait. Can you create some water and we’ll see if we can transfer that out first just in case. These runes should be good for at least five attempts so wasting one for a test is fine."

Kat nodded and did so, turning her finger into a water gun for a few moments as the let the water flow. Scar waited for it to spread out and then gestured for Lily to power the runes. When Lily pushed her mana into the ground they all lit up, glowing blue and then in the middle of the formation, water started to run everywhere. Lily was a bit worried as it coated the runes, but a glance at Scar showed she was unconcerned. It worked!