Playing Detective

The Ritual And The Monster

"Do we have everything?" Yellow peers over their shoulder, looking at their friend who is busy taking out candles and setting them together in a circle. "Do you have a lighter?" Alex asks, and Yellow throws them one over, the fuel only half of what there used to be. "Sweet," Alex says as they flick the lighter, satisfied to see the small flame.

The blue haired student kneels down and starts lighting the candles, and orders their friend to complete the summoning circle. Yellow proceeds just as told, drawing some blood from themself using a needle (let's be safe here) and into a small bowl before dipping their finger into it and drawing a circle with the markings they see in the good ol' tutorial book.

The two step back after they're done with their respective tasks. Alex almost forgets to put the Sacrifice–a red gemstone, large enough to hold in one's hands– in the middle of the circle, and when they've done it, they smirk, satisfied with their work, "Chant it."

Yellow takes one last look into the tutorial book before chanting the spell written in it, trying their best not to stutter any words, or that would cause consequences. Alex puts their hands together as they watch the earth beneath them slowly crack open, a bright red light coming from underneath, and as the cracks slowly get bigger by the second. Yellow almost falters, but they keep chanting the spell.

The blue, sunny, afternoon sky slowly gets darker, turning into an ugly, scary shade of crimson and the white clouds turning into dark grey ones. Right then and there, time stops still.

--

"I know I've said this before, but are you sure no one would mind if we just... left during club activity? Like. No teachers are coming after us as we speak?" Jade plays with a strand of their hair, twirling it around their finger as their friend keeps slurping their noodles. "I told you not to worry about it," Rutile says with a full mouth, and swallows. "Besides, Euc can get away with taking so many breathers. So why couldn't we?"

The green haired student takes a deep breath before facepalming. "That's because Euc was inside the school grounds. We, on the other hand, are OUTSIDE. We should be in school right now." Jade says as they slurp their own noodles.

"If you're so against it, then why did you agree to come?" Rutile quirks an eyebrow.

"Because I want to keep an eye on you." Jade swallows their noodles.

"Fair enough. Let's go back after we're done with our noodles."

--

Euclase walks down the corridors and sprints down the hallways. Their eyes dart around everywhere they could lay them on--not good. Everyone stopped moving--you can practically see the ranch frozen midair as Bluzo chugs down a whole jar of it. The smoke from Heliodor's joint is frozen as well, and no matter how many attempts Euclase tries to move both the ranch and the smoke particles in the air, they all end in disappointment.

They head to the library next--Ghost's corpse they had shot down yesterday and Cairngorm's alongside it still hasn't budged. No one cleaned up the dead bodies? They wonder to themself, but that's the least of their concerns now. They make a beeline towards the shelves, and scramble, searching for that one secret bookshelf and the hidden books laid out on it.

After a moment of panic, they find it–hard cover, and any clue on its author is the scribble on the first page which reads 'Shin'. Euclase skims through the pages, reading through every word and going at it as fast as they can. Euclase sure can take their sweet, sweet time at it--time stops, so that's one worry aside, but that's also the main reason they're panicking so much right now. They search for the words inside their head, trying to find the entry inside one of the hidden books that explains this whole... phenomenon.