Chapter 68.2

A gentle, chill breeze drifted through the countless trees of the Demali Forest Preserve. Precious few leaves clung to their branches at this time of year, as they had yet to regrow following the long winter. Still, the wind made a pleasant noise as it danced around and between the many barren branches. The trees swayed from side to side, lazily dancing with their kin in time with the weather, and tiny scraps of leaves long fallen skipped across the path that wound through the woods.

Tessa had never enjoyed nature walks. She preferred the excitement of a raucous party, the passion of a good fuck, perhaps the rush of the occasional illicit substance. In the absence of such thrills, she still preferred spending her time inside; at least at home she had full control over the temperature. If she wanted to cuddle under a blanket, she could chill the apartment to offset the heat of the fabric. If she wanted to laze around in nothing but a pair of shorts, it was just as easy to warm her surroundings.

In spite of years of precedent, it was hard to deny the pleasure of today’s excursion. She’d been spending more and more time outside this last week, mostly because of Nick. Ever since Vee had partially cured his lycanthropy, his magical connection to the natural world had led to him spending more time outside, mostly in the massive forest preserve near campus. He’d enjoyed nature walks in the past—he had countless stories of navigating the woods behind his grandparents’ house—but now his time in Demali was spent wrestling with his altered identity. Fears of potential lingering magic from The Wilds had led to him inviting Tessa on his many walks, just in case.

Today’s adventure, in contrast, had been Chloé’s idea. After finishing her first day of classes in a wheelchair, she’d been so excited about the semi-tolerable weather that she’d invited everyone to wander the woods with her. Every time Tessa glanced at Chloé, she found her ghostly friend beaming with appreciation of the breeze, the rustling leaves, the lingering smells of winter.

Nick walked behind Chloé, happily pushing her wheelchair to allow her a chance to relax. He’d forgone a jacket, and instead wore a thick, green, button-down flannel and a simple pair of blue jeans. Not only did his bulky size help keep him warm, but he’d also grown hairier following his training session with Amara. Imani wore a puffy beige coat with a thick faux-fur lining, though given the slightly warmer weather, she left it unzipped. Tessa wore a heavy, black, oversized jean jacket that perpetually hung off one shoulder. She’d gotten used to Amara warming the air around them, and found herself shivering more than expected in her absence. Their demonic friend, along with Vee, had simply missed too much school recently. They were putting in overtime to prove to the Dean that giving them academic allowances was a worthwhile investment.

The group had spent most of the early walk simply catching up. Imani was thrilled that she was finally getting used to life on campus, and even had several new friends outside of their established group. Nick had played a short game of basketball with his more athletic friends, and he was happy to report that he’d found it enjoyable. Chloé, normally the most reserved of their friends, had the most to say. She had dozens of small stories from her first full day as a wheelchair user, most of which were good, though she had several cross words regarding a rude student that had pushed her aside on his way to a nearby staircase.

Tessa had little to contribute. She didn’t care much about her studies, as they were only a formality to justify her presence at Aurelius. Instead, as she listened to Chloé’s excited story about which teachers had been the most amenable to her new situation, Tessa focused on the chair itself. She was ecstatic to see it working so well, and the smile on Chloé’s face made all the hours of research worth it. Now that it was finished, however, Tessa felt unusually listless.

“—and I thought that Floros Hall was gonna be one of the easier ones to navigate, but the ramps are steeper than they look! I ended up just getting out of the chair and pushing it myself, but then I caught a couple people giving me weird looks and just, ugh, it was so annoying.” As she talked, Chloé absentmindedly held Tessa’s hand. Ever since getting her chair yesterday, she’d been increasingly casually affectionate with everyone. “But, um, yeah. I guess I went on a bit of a tangent there, I didn’t mean to take over the conversation…”

Tessa smiled and squeezed Chloé’s hand. “I’m just happy the chair is working so well. I half-expected our first attempt to be a failure, and it’s kinda crazy to see it operating exactly as intended.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, Tess, you’re practically a genius when it comes to crafting runes!” Imani said.

“Yeah, Tess. Be proud of yourself already!” Chloé said with a cute laugh. “But, enough about me. How are you doing? You’ve been awfully quiet today, which I can only assume means you haven’t had enough coffee.”

With a quiet chuckle, Tessa reached out and playfully jostled Chloé’s hair, much to her annoyance. “Nah, it’s nothing like that. I’m just feeling a bit… I don’t. Aimless. I’m not sure what to do with myself.”

“How so?” Nick asked.

“Well, like, I don’t think I need to remind everyone how crazy the last few months have been.” Everyone present groaned in agreement. “I had quite a bit where I was trying to figure out the weird magical shifts on campus. Then we found most of the circles, and I switched to trying to decipher them. When Wellington’s stupid cult started altering everything, I had to figure out what changes they were making and why. Then Amara and Vee got sucked into Purgatory and I needed to figure out how to get them back, and then Davenport showed up with all her bullshit. After we dealt with her, The Wilds came into sync with campus, and I needed to find a way to get all those wolves back home. Once that was finished, I decided to put together the wheelchair. Now, for the first time in fucking ages… nothing’s happening. Imani and I can’t find any other planes syncing up with Earth, the chair is working perfectly. There’s technically still the Planar Gate, but that’s a massive project that I’ll probably be chipping away at for years, if not longer. I guess I’m just… I dunno.”

“It sounds like you need a project! Something new to play around with!” Imani chipped in, a singsongy lilt to her voice.

Tessa narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Why do I get the feeling that you already have an idea?”

“We have the flowers we need to make ink, Tess. You’re potentially a single coven meeting away from getting some new shiny tattoos to play with!” Imani’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “Plus, I’ve been itching to dive into my Scribe work again. The smell of the magical ink, the way a fresh tattoo glistens under the work lights…”

This wasn’t the first time Imani had brought up the idea of getting more tattoos. For years, Tessa had assumed she would never have the opportunity. The previous head of their coven, Cassandra Davenport, would never have allowed it. Now, with a friendlier Headmistress and a fresh crop of magical materials taken from The Wilds, there was nothing standing in Tessa’s way. The only problem was that she had no idea what additional magic she wanted.

“That would require me to make a decision,” Tessa grumbled.

“Your mom had ice magic, right?” Nick asked. “Would you have any interest in following in her footsteps?”

Tessa pretended to gag as she thought about the runes required to harness ice. “Absolutely not. That requires pulling water from The Depths and then using Purgatory to siphon away the heat, and to be honest? After everything with Brandon, and then sinking all that time into the wheelchair, I’m kinda sick of Purgatory.” She briefly glanced at her ghostly friend, then added, “No offense, Chloé.”

“None taken, Tess!” Chloé said happily. “It’s kinda funny thinking that I’ve got some innate connection to a plane that can give people cool ice powers.”

“Huh…” Imani mumbled to herself.

Already looking at Chloé, Tessa’s thoughts drifted back to the last several magical problems she’d solved. The wheelchair had been enjoyable to put together, but it hadn’t been as difficult as Imani and her had expected. Most of the process involved isolating specific patterns of runes already present in the Lysander circle. There hadn’t been much need for creative problem solving. Before starting on the wheelchair, however, Tessa had figured out a way to retrofit the circle under the Cafeteria to serve as a proper portal. That project had been much more exciting; it had taken weeks of research, and she’d only cracked the code thanks to an off-the-cuff joke from Chloé. The answer had necessitated shifting her thought process, coming at the problem from a new angle more in line with the magic in question.

The conversation paused briefly as a random pair of students strolled past in the opposite direction. As they waited, Chloé pulled out her phone and held it as high as she could to try and check her notifications. The magic of the wheelchair, much like most of the runic magic witches utilized, heavily interfered with technology.

Huh.

I’ve always been curious about that. What is it about our magic that fucks with tech? Amara, Vee, and Chloé all have phones, and none of their powers mess with them. It’s specifically just those of us that use the runic language.

“Hey, Chloé,” Tess started.

“Yeah?”

“You can see witch magic, right?”

Chloé nodded. “Yup! I think it’s a side effect of how I’m kinda in between planes. Why?”

“Just… thinking about phones and tech and stuff. They never seem to work right around magic, and no one in our coven knows why.” Tessa looked around briefly to make sure the other students were gone, then pulled out her phone. “So, you can see this, right?”

Tessa focused on her magic, activating her telekinesis and using it to hover her phone over her hand. Just as she predicted, brief distortions and bits of static appeared on her screen.

“I can, yeah. I can see how the runes pull the magic in from… wherever it’s coming from.”

“Telekinesis is the Astral Plane, right?” Nick asked.

“It is, but we know it’s not just an Astral problem,” Tessa said. “When I got trapped underneath vines from The Wilds, neither me or Amara could get any service. The same thing happened to her when Brandon trapped her underneath the Science Building. It’s clearly not all magic, though. Amara was able to call Nick while her hands were actively on fire way back when her powers first appeared.”

“So it’s just runic magic, then,” Imani added. “That’s good to know, but it doesn’t really give us a way to address the root of the problem.”

“My initial theory was that magic being channeled in from other planes interrupted with the wireless signals phones rely so heavily on. This might still be true, but it’s not the whole picture. Chloé tried to get her Game Boy to work a while back, but the Lysander circle still fucked with it. That means it’s all electronics, not just the wireless signals.”

“Technically it was a 3DS, not a Game Boy,” Chloé muttered. “Though, um, I don’t think that changes anything… Even the more analog stuff I’ve got in my dorm acts kinda weird around my chair.”

“The point is that, when we assembled the runes for the chair, we floated a few ideas about how to lessen the tech disruption. Nothing we tried worked, but I think we were going about it all wrong. We were trying to streamline the runes, make them cleaner and less messy, but that was never the answer. The runes that power my telekinesis are incredibly simplistic, and witches have been using them for centuries. If the problem simply lies with all runic magic, no amount of simplification is going to help.”

“It sounds like you’re saying this is an unsolvable problem,” Imani griped.

“No, I’m saying we need to look at this from a different angle. I didn’t solve The Wilds portal by brute forcing it, I configured the runes to act in a manner that made sense for the more chaotic, fae-adjacent magic. What if, instead of trying to separate the tech and the magic, we found a way for them to coexist?”

“Ooh! Magitech! Magitech!” Chloé said excitedly. “That’s a super common trope in fantasy stories, it’s when they find a way to harness magic as if it were a form of technology!”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Tessa said. “I’m thinking something more like… like a lightning rod. If the magic is going to interact with electricity no matter what, what if we simply gave it a dedicated channel of its own?”

“That sounds more like a faraday cage,” Nick said.

“Yes! Exactly!” Tessa’s mind raced with ideas. “If we overlaid a series of magical runes onto an electrical circuit, we might be able to guide the magic safely around the electricity! It would take a lot of iteration, and we’d probably need to get pretty creative with how we were applying the runes, but this might give us a way to sidestep the tech issue altogether!”

The idea clicked for Imani next, and she ran in front of Tessa with an idea of her own. “Okay, Tess, hear me out. If this is something you’re serious about, what if we hooked you up with some Aether runes? If we gave you the ability to safely channel lightning, then added on some additional layers of protection and isolation, we could totally alter the effects to include electricity as well! That would make it way easier to graft whatever runes you needed onto the tech you’re working with!”

Lightning? Electricity? That would give me the ability to solder pieces together on my own, and I wouldn’t need to worry about potential magical short circuits injuring me. Actually, if we added additional runes of intent, I might be able to… Oh. I like that.

“What if we added conversational runes linked with The Wilds? If we did that—”

“You might be able to interface directly with the systems themselves! Tess, you’re a genius!” Imani shouted, bouncing from side to side in excitement. “This is perfect! Oh gosh, okay, I need to draft up a proposal and schedule a meeting with the coven heads. I’ll need blueprints, sketches, and I’ll also need to draft the tattoos themselves. Were you thinking something simple, or did you want to weave the runes into a more elaborate piece of art? I’ll need to settle on a design before I start picking out dyes to mix into the ink, and that requires knowing what I’m tattooing ahead of time. Actually, shit, if I’m going to start mixing all this ink anyways…”

Imani paused for a moment, her gaze drifting to Chloé. “I’m gonna be making some wild pitches already, and there’s no reason not to shoot for the stars. Chloé, what you mentioned earlier gives me an idea. You’ve already got an inherent connection to Purgatory, right? You also just figured out a way to more precisely control those… those… shoot, what did you call them? Your shouting thing.”

“Oh! I call them planar tremors. When I was trying to hold back Nick when he first transformed, I found a way to focus them with more precision than I initially thought possible.”

“Okay girl, hear me out. You already have several key connections and abilities that witches normally need runes to fabricate. Any interest in getting some magic of your own? For example, if we gave you the ability to channel water from The Depths, you wouldn’t even need to know much about how the runes work. It would likely be a pretty simple extension of your own natural abilities.”

Chloé’s eyes widened at the possibility. “Ice magic? Me? I mean, I wouldn’t want to step on anyone’s toes, and I know witches are pretty strict about giving out magic and stuff…”

Imani kneeled in front of Chloé’s chair and took her hands. “Listen to me. Every witch in the world dreams of discovering new applications for magic, but Scribes? It’s different for us. Even if Tessa and I can crack the code on this theoretical technology magic, the actual runes themselves will still operate on principles that all witches already understand. If you want some magic of your own, it would give me a chance to study—hell, possibly even pioneer—runes that function on a completely new set of principles. To my knowledge, no one in our coven has ever had a chance to blend runic magic with inherent magic before. It would be a dream come true!”

“Well, I guess if you put it that way…” A giddy smile slowly crept onto Chloé’s face. “That actually sounds really cool! I’d love to help!”

“Fuck yeah!” Imani leaped into the air as she cheered.

As the wave of anticipation swept over the group, Tessa stepped closer to Nick and grabbed his hand. “Since we’re already planning on petitioning the coven, would you want—”

“Not even a little bit,” Nick interjected. “I’ve already had more than my fill of magic for one lifetime.”

Looking back at Imani and Chloé, both excited in their own ways, Tessa smiled. “Alright, it’s settled. What are we waiting for? Let’s start writing our proposal!”