All throughout the lecture hall, the girls were sitting in circles on the floor, one person in the middle, taking turns channeling power. It felt less like magic and more like a team building exercise–and, really, it felt even less like that and more like a game for toddlers. Duck Duck Goose, but someone sat in the middle. Guess the Leader without any guessing.
Daniel resisted the urge to make any sarcastic quips about kiddie games, but the jokes still came to mind.
He kept his mouth shut, because if Daniel started making quips about how babyish the exercise felt, the retorts would be fast, obvious, and draw far more attention to the diaper he’d been required to wear. Better to keep silent and avoid reprisal.
And, besides, he had work to do. This was why he was here, after all, to learn magic.
He began as the top left point on the pentacle–the point representing ‘Earth’. Mathilde sat to his left, Hazel to his right, and Asami sat right in the center of the circle, legs crossed on the ground.
In practice, there was no need for them to literally sit in a pentacle formation to do their magic, but this helped everyone remember their roles and reinforced the positions they were attempting to fulfill. Daniel, as Earth, was the most tangible, physical point in their coven, the shaper of all things solid.
“How do we start?” Cassie asked.
Asami spoke up. “I’ve done this before, so you can just follow my instructions. Scoot closer, though.” They all did so, moving close enough in that they could reach out and touch one another. “Okay, put one hand on the shoulder of the wom–the person next to you, and one hand on me, then follow my lead.”
She shut her eyes, as all the girls reached out their hands. Mathilde’s hand rested on Daniel’s shoulder, a gentle touch.
Daniel didn’t know if he should take her instruction to ‘follow her lead’ literally, so he watched for a moment, waiting to see that the other girls had actually closed their eyes. Once they did, though, he still watched for a moment longer. Hazel’s face was tight with concentration, and Cassie’s looked uncertain, eyelids fluttering like she was tempted to look around and see if she was doing everything correctly. Radha, meanwhile, wore a smirk, like she’d thought of something funny she couldn’t wait to share.
Mathilde and Asami, though, looked relaxed. Since they were the most experienced amongst the group, Daniel tried to mimic them, clearing out his mind. Reaching out, he laid hands on Cassie, to his left, and on Asami. He shut his eyes, pushed aside worries, and allowed his magical sensitivity to extend to the space around him.
Gently touching of hands, a close, cozy circle, the closed eyes and silent halls, it all facilitated their mental bonds. With practice, Daniel knew that covens could link minds with one another like second nature, but for now, they had to prime their brains and bodies to prepare.
Though the goal was different, the intent had much in common with Rachel’s own mental manipulation the day before: Creating parity between headspace and arcane goals.
He felt the pull a moment later–Asami’s mind touching his own. He didn’t allow her in, exactly, his thoughts were his own, but he met the connection and matched it. A mental handshake, rather than a mental hug; he was reticent to open himself too much to strangers.
Through her, in a moment, he felt the others. Asami formed a mental basin, from which rivers flowed in and out, pooling their connections. They had no spells to cast, but they shared energy regardless.
Daniel struggled with the specifics of his own cornerstone. He was Earth, his role was to give their magic solid shape, an outline. However, though he tried, the rivers that flowed between them still spilled out, sloshing over their banks and beds. The connections were strong, but without an equally strong boundary to hem it all in, much of the finer details were lost.
(It’s my first time doing this,) he reminded himself. (It’s fine if I make a few mistakes.)
He thought he could almost hear the thoughts of the other girls, but it was shrouded, too, muffled by the babbling power flowing between them. All he got was a vague impression–Cassie’s anxiety, Hazel’s tightly focused efforts. Enough that they could coordinate their efforts, not enough to invade privacy.
After a few minutes of this, Asami let the connection fade, streams of power drying up, and Daniel opened his eyes.
“So, that’s pretty much what it’s like,” she said. “Mathilde, do you want to be our next Familiar?”
Mathilde smiled and nodded, and everyone shifted one seat to the left, while Mathilde rolled to the center of their circle, and once again they all shared their touch.
Taking the point of Aether, Daniel expected his role to be different, but the fundamental shape of their coven to be the same. However, as Mathilde made her mental connection, Daniel found himself not connected by a stream, but by a current of wind.
There was no dribbling connection flowing directly. Instead, the power he shared was picked up like a paper airplane, carried on currents to a whirling centerpiece–not so violent as a tornado or a hurricane, more like a gentle updraft.
With Mathilde as their Familiar, he had no carte-blanche connection to the other girls’ thoughts or feelings. The power drifted away from him as needed, and came back as needed, little packets that were insulated from one another. The only thoughts he received were ones deliberately sent, asking for more power or less, focused requests to help shape their mental landscape more precisely.
And his own job was to ensure that the packets were handled correctly–zipping to the right people, at the right times. It was now Asami’s job to keep the power from being lost, she’d taken the job of Earth, and she did so reliably. Daniel, however, struggled to keep things on course in his own way. Some magic went to the wrong people, or arrived at the wrong times–too much to one witch, too little to another. In his effort to keep the connections consistent, he caused the mental wind to billow and gust, only to lose it all.
(Dammit,) he thought, annoyed with himself. (This shouldn’t be hard, we’re not even moving much power. What’s wrong with me?)
Only a second later, the connection dropped, severed completely in an instant.
Daniel blinked a couple times, surprised by the sudden absence of magic, and looked around. “What happened?”
Mathilde looked away for a moment, then only said, “Some things were said a little too loudly, that I assume we’d rather keep private.”
Everyone glanced around in confusion, except Daniel, who just widened his eyes. Mathilde must have heard his thought, his self depreciation, and rather than let that mote of personal criticism be announced to the group, she’d ended the exercise. And, because Daniel hadn’t thought to look around in mock confusion, he’d made it obvious who had led to the early completion.
Since it was already obvious that Daniel was the one she’d done this for, he mumbled, “Thanks.”
He assumed everyone else was wondering, ‘What did Daniel think about?’, but nobody asked, and Mathilde’s expression made him believe his secret was safe with her.
“Hazel, you’re next,” Mathilde said, as she moved to take her spot in the pentacle once more.
And, once again, things were different. Hazel was no current, no gentle breeze.
Hazel’s mind called up the image of thick metallic cable, electricity coursing through it at blinding speeds. The power wasn’t necessarily greater than the previous two, but she threw it around with reckless abandon.
It was Daniel’s job to be the Aqueus, the flow of the power, and in this role he failed utterly. He struggled to understand the distinction between this and his previous job, and within moments, surges of crackling power were coursing around, his inexperience and Hazel’s aggressive speed playing off each other in the worst way.
And then he heard a thought, more crystalline and exact than anything he’d heard up to that point.
(So what was Daniel thinking that was so embarrassing?)
He could not identify the voice, the speaker, only the words, and it seemed to be a careless message. Hazel didn’t have Mathilde’s experience, and wasn’t holding anything back. Their thoughts were a PA system.
(Hazel, you need to control thought flow better. Our thoughts are spilling.)
(No I don’t, we’re a team, we’re supposed to know each other.)
(She’s got a point.)
(Still, we’re just now learning–that’s unfair to put on him.)
And, because trying not to think about something was impossible, Daniel’s mind slipped. (I can’t–fuck shit think about something else elephants elephants elephants–)
Trying to shield his thoughts through a barrage of mindless noise, Daniel lost even the tiny bit of control he’d had over his role. Feedback began to build in their magic.
(It’s got to be one of the diaper things.)
(Probably true.)
(If I were him, I’d have quit the instant they made me wear that. Is he shameless or does he like it?)
(Maybe he just really wants to learn?)
(Yeah, no, he’s doing this for kicks.)
(Who would like this?)
Daniel tried to pull away, but an arc of electric shock struck his mind, and his hand felt almost magnetized to her arm. He winced. They’d built up power too fast, and to retreat was painful. Mind racing, he couldn’t do a thing to prevent the thoughts that flashed to the forefront of his mind.
Rachel, leering over him, as she dealt out her humiliations. The sense of pathetic smallness he’d felt when she first put him in a diaper, and the deeper, greater shame when she’d forced him to use it. The window she’d put in his room, a constant display of his ineptitude, his incompetence, his–
(Enough.)
The mental connection broke. Daniel felt a tiny static burst, but the overwhelming power didn’t course through him.
Eyes snapping open, he saw Mathilde wince a little, and could sense the burst of power seeping out into the ground around them. He heard footsteps behind their bubble and looked out to see Blackburn, a few steps away, pulling out her wand.
Before Blackburn could act, though, Mathilde smiled and shook her head.
“Sorry, Professor,” she said. “We got a little out of hand there, but I brought it back into control.”
“Very well.” Blackburn looked at them for a cold, thoughtful moment, and Daniel was certain he felt her gaze land on him for longer than any of the others. “If you know what went wrong, remember that, and find new roles for those who couldn’t handle it.”
Daniel was glad his next thoughts weren’t projected to the whole group. (So far we haven’t found anything I can handle.)
It was, to his surprise, Hazel that spoke up when the teacher had left. “So, your prefect is Rachel?”
“Yeah,” Daniel said. “She’s…”
“She’s such an ass,” Hazel finished. “She’s mine, too. Pretty sure someone shoved coal up her ass and she’s trying to turn it into diamonds.”
“I heard about her,” Radha added. “She got in a shouting match with a second year while I was getting settled in. I don’t know what about, but–I didn’t know faces could get that red just from yelling.”
“You’re…not wrong,” Daniel said. “She hated me before she knew the first thing about me, and she literally said she wants to make my life hell. What’s her deal?”
“She’s just mad because she knows she’s barely scraping by, and it makes her self conscious,” Asami explained, adding in a whisper. “She’s nearly flunked out of two classes. Had to take extra studies to stay enrolled.”
Daniel frowned, confused. “What? I mean, I haven’t seen her test scores or anything, but she’s good. She’s got control like you wouldn’t believe, she’s fast–what’s her problem?”
“Oh, she’s a Nitch,” Mathilde said.
“The right term is, ‘Bitch’,” Hazel supplied, producing a giggle from Radha.
“No, but seriously,” Mathilde continued. “A Niche Witch. ‘Nitch’. She’s good enough at a few things that she can scrape by, but her coven is…a disaster. Rumor says, she’s the reason Blackburn won’t let people trade coven members, because people kept trying to get rid of her.”
Asami shook her head. “That’s just a rumor, the rule’s always been around.”
“Still, if it’s a rumor, gotta be based in something,” Radha said. “Should we keep going?”
“You’re on deck,” Hazel replied.
Radha’s practice passed quickly–her mental landscape was rather like Asami’s, and yet rather different. Magic still flowed like water, but instead of streams and lakes, her passages and basins were colorful plastic slides and swimming pools, and the water poured rapidly around. Slower than Hazel, faster than Asami, it struck a balance between the two girls.
What stood out to Daniel was not Radha at all, but his own performance. As the point of Spirit, he was meant to supply the concept of the magic. Since they weren’t casting spells, this part was easy–he could have given it any concept that he wanted, but that ended up being so broad that he couldn’t even imagine what to make it into. He didn’t fail, exactly, but nor did he really try.
That left only one other student to take the center before Daniel would be up.
Cassie hadn’t said much so far, and Daniel had little idea what to expect when she walked to the center of the group, sat cross legged, and extended her own mind to the rest of them.
Daniel expected some new metaphor for the exchange of power, but instead, he found that the first thing he saw in the space was…Cassie.
She didn’t represent herself as a metaphor at all. Instead, Cassie stood in front of him, though her uniform had been replaced with a flowing blue dress, and she stood in a garden, surrounded by warmth, life, and growing things.
Daniel saw no direct transfer of power, but then he saw that it wasn’t just Cassie in the mental landscape–the other girls were there too. Not as the people he recognized, though. Radha was a squirrel, darting across the garden, carrying acorns which she deposited in a pile at Cassie’s feet. Asami had the form of a fox, prowling around, keeping everything in line, while Mathilde looked like a robin out of a Disney movie. Hazel was, perhaps inevitably, a prickly hedgehog.
The whole group, all the woodland creatures, were rushing to her and from her, bringing little things from the garden, or taking them away, while she hummed a little tune.
Daniel’s nose twitched, and he reached up, pawing at his face for a moment, pulling a floppy ear over his eyes. It took him a moment to realize what he’d appeared as, glancing back to eye his cotton ball tail.
(I’m a bunny rabbit?) he groaned to himself. (Ugh–I guess that’s better than a skunk.)
He’d taken the role of Mind, and here, he felt most confident. The practical part of spellcasting, not working with concepts, but with form. He scurried up to Cassie, and she knelt, brushing a hand between his ears and petting back his fur before handing him a handful of seeds that’d been brought in by Mathilde.
Daniel understood immediately what Mathilde was conceptualizing–the loose idea of a light spell. Not something difficult, not something they’d actually cast, but it was a spell he knew and could work with. Hopping away, he pictured what he wanted in his mind, bringing forth a concept conceptualized–of course–as a long, pointy carrot.
For all the cartoon juvenility of the mindscape, here, Daniel the Fluffy Bunny Rabbit felt most confident, most at ease. He might not be good at the other points, but when it came to the Mind, the knowledge of how spellcasting worked, he felt he had a handle on things.
His job didn’t require working with gut feeling or judgment, and it didn’t ask him to control power in precise ways–it was, almost completely, a mental game of taking memorized information from his head and using that information to give the ideas form and shape.
This was where he belonged, and he knew it. Above and beyond the here and now, more than just in their training, this is the role that warlocks belonged in. There was power here, and this was the place he could use it.
A warlock, with all the speed and power that implied, could take this power and do incredible things with it.
His early assumptions had been wrong–the witches in a coven weren’t simply batteries that charged up their spells. They did far more, providing structure, relieving the mental load of spellcasting and allowing magic to have greater precision.
The warlock leading a coven wouldn’t have to worry about using too much or too little power, the Aether point handled that. Nor did he have to worry about losing energy, that was controlled by Earth. Spirit and Mind reinforced the mental and literal structure of the magic, and Aqueus kept it all moving, flowing, so that the warlock would have all this ready at his fingertips.
Maybe this would be a different course to the top. Maybe he didn’t even need to go to a warlock school. Daniel didn’t need to perfect everything after all–as a warlock leading a coven, he would have the girls to compensate for his weaknesses. They would give him everything he needed to achieve mastery, to let him demonstrate the power he had within him.
Plus, occasionally, Cassie would scratch him between the ears.
The mental connection finally faded, and Cassie sighed happily. Of all the groupings so far, this one had worked the best, and there were smiles all around when it ended.
“You’re up, Daniel,” Asami said.
Daniel felt it a bit unnecessary, but he wanted to do it regardless, just to see what the role felt like. A mental understanding was good, even if it wasn’t where he belonged.
So, moving to the center of the group, Daniel sat down, letting all the girls reach out and rest their hands on him. It was more physical contact than he could remember having since…he wasn’t sure, but he tried not to let that bother him, donning the mental role of the coven’s familiar.
Daniel extended his mind. To make the proper mental connections he had to go one at a time, slowly unfolding the arms of their pentacle, and it wasn’t until he’d touched every girl that he realized the form his own mental landscape had taken.
He was neither a pool, nor a garden, nor even a gardener.
He was not the only human, surrounded by a group of abstract representations of his peers. Daniel had projected himself as some kind of machine, not a computer even, but a modular, five-way arcade cabinet.
Every other member of the coven stood around him, human, fully formed, speaking plainly, talking to each other about what they wanted to do, and Daniel was the only one without a voice.
He immediately felt the claustrophobia–in his mind, he was unable to move, except for how the girls moved him. They had all the controls, after all, the buttons to push and the joysticks to move to get the results they wanted. He was a game for them, or a toy.
And, as Blackburn had made clear, he was helpless. He hadn’t realized how helpless, either, until he was here, projecting the mental image into the world, with zero control over the magic. The only choice he had was to keep the coven’s connection alive, or to end it.
But, a moment later, he realized something else.
His goal as the coven’s Familiar was to carry magic between them–thoughts, energy, willpower. In his first moments, he’d been waiting for that to begin. As with his other roles, the work would show up, and he’d start handling it as best he could.
Ten seconds passed in the mental space, where the girls played his mental arcade and input elaborate button combinations. Only then did he realize it’d already begun, and he hadn’t even noticed.
He’d been succeeding, and he hadn’t even noticed. Sure, the mental construct was uncomfortable, even claustrophobic, but above all else it was effortless. Even trying to take notice, Daniel barely registered the effort it took to move it, and the thought process was reflexive, second nature.
Even being the Mind had been work, but this?
This was child’s play.
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