"I hate doing this stuff."
Felix looked up from where he was sorting books to see Alice elbow-deep in some sort of glowing purple goo. He bit his lip to stifle a laugh at her face, she had pure disgust written all over it and the way her lips twisted was quite comical.
"There's a reason I make you do it."
She glared at him, her expression quickly morphing again as she pushed deeper into it, "you didn't make me, I just lost the stupid rock-paper-scissors battle. I still think we should've gone two out of three."
"Yeah, then you'd lose and want three out of five and we'd be here all day."
Alice stuck out her tongue before turning her attention back to the bucket on the floor. She took a deep breath before finally reaching the bottom. She was almost up to her shoulder in it, and she tried to avoid looking at the mess. Her fingertips finally brushed against something metal, and she quickly yanked it out of the bucket, doing her best to wipe the purple goo off out of the corners of the piece. She hated this type of work, having to do all of the awful things Felix didn't feel like doing. No matter, he was bound to lose one of their games one day or another.
"Hey Felix, I got it," Alice said, holding the metal piece up a bit higher and trying to catch it in the light to see what it was.
"Great," he said, standing and letting his book fall to the ground. Alice grimaced, handing off the piece to Felix and going over to rescue the book.
"So what is it?" She asked, sitting cross legged on the floor and smoothing a page that Felix had crumpled.
He barely paid mind to her question, instead looking past the purple sludge covering the metal in his hand. He stood up quickly, going over to the wall to find some water to clean it with.
"Felix," Alice said sharply, "what is it?"
Felix glanced over his shoulder before looking back to the piece, "it's a piece of an old summoning circle."
"I thought those were like runes. Don't you just draw those?"
"You can, but there are some permanent ones that are a lot stronger. Kind of like building a gate. You can summon pretty much anything out of it."
"Even an Odio?" Alice asked incredulously.
Felix glared at her, "why would you want to?"
Alice shrugged, "just curious."
Nodding slowly, Felix walked over to her with the piece and a wet rag in his hand. "Yes, technically you could summon an army of Odios with it. Why you would want to, I have no idea. But yes."
Alice cocked her head, attention diverted again to the book in her hand, "so what do we need a permanent summoning circle for?"
"It's called an ostium. And I don't think we need it, we're just cleaning out things I've gathered over the years."
"Where'd you get a piece of an ostium?"
Felix held it up to the light, examining the symbols etched in gold over the smooth metal, "you ask too many questions, you know that?"
Alice stood, gathering the books surrounding her and carrying them to one of the many shelves built into the walls, "do you remember what you told me when I first started working with you?"
"You mean when you became my apprentice?"
"Whatever. You told me to always ask questions, that it was better to ask and look stupid than not ask and end up dead."
"That was before I knew you asked so many inconsequential questions."
Just as Alice was about to retort, the small cell phone next to Felix started buzzing. They both made eye contact, before diving for it at the same time. Alice managed to grab it first, eyes glancing over the screen to read the message quickly. She threw it to Felix when she was done, mouth set in a hard line. Felix already knew it wouldn't be an assignment he felt like taking, mostly because he didn't feel like taking any assignments at the moment. He had to admit though, reading the ancient latin text sent over a very modern device made him smile. The irony was definitely something he could appreciate. After reading it over twice to make sure of the details of the meeting, he started whisking around the room, gathering supplies. Alice, unhappy that there would be another assignment, just sat and watched. Felix barely noticed, being used to her temperament. He threw her a backpack that had been swung over the corner of one of the bookshelves that hadn't been built into the wall, jerking his head towards the corner of the room that was starting to overflow with weapons.
