The Riddle Of Magic

Chapter 52: Clutching at Faith

✨ Mature Content Ahead! ✨

Had Rosie lied?

Alastor's heart was pounding as he felt his counterspell fail to overpower the magic of Valentino's binding ritual. Again.

It had already failed three times, and he wearily consulted his notes again, running tabulations on his sigils. Based on what the Lace Overlord had told them, he had everything he needed to undo the spell she'd set to trap Valentino and eliminate him, the spell she'd set with urging from another spectre.

If she had led them astray, he would have to kill her for that betrayal. They were almost out of time for the option of using magic to stop Valentino rather than brute force. And at this point the ritual had almost completed its maturation, meaning that brute force would almost certainly be meted out through the unfortunates bound to the moth demon through his magic. He might as well hunt down and destroy everyone connected to him at that rate.

Being voided by the work of Nox Magia would be mercy compared to what would come from that other magic.

Alastor didn't like casting while desperate, but he was running out of strength to be able to undo the other spell. His furniture was shoved into the kitchen area, the coffee table stacked over the sofa, giving him the most space possible within his flat. The deer demon stooped on the floor, looking over his sigil with a frustrated hand in his hair, wondering where he'd gone wrong.

There were only three components needed for the counter-ritual, other than raw strength to cast it. He had plenty of that, the Radio Demon thought with irritation, imbibing another glass of dark as he looked at the sigil representing the other pieces. A caster, an instrument, and a catalyst - the three riddles to put together a counterspell against the arcane energy of the other ritual.

Rosie was the caster, of that there was no doubt. She'd seemed somewhat proud of her part too, at least to a point. She'd used a black soul vase as her instrument to hold the energy for her ritual, had even shown him how she'd orchestrated the spell before he'd started attempting his counter-ritual.

The catalyst, admittedly, was trickiest to decipher, and his shadow confirmed that's where the arcane energy of their spell was tangling.

"If she lied," Alastor snarled, rage and exhaustion twining in his gut.

"It's not a lie," the ruby-faced spectre coiled around him, settling against his back like a cloak of night. "It may be tied to a soul, but that one is still our kin. Even if it is veiled now behind a gender and a name, it is a spectre still."

"Why would a spectre veil itself?"

"We are only what we are," the shade said plainly. "Perhaps the greatest wish would be to know what we do not know. How to live... how to die."

"How to lie?" Alastor's fists clenched as he studied his sigil, kneeling to be close to the pattern on the floor. "Spectres have no ego, you've told me. Surely a veiled spectre would be different."

"You have known that one for longer than knowing the truth of what they are. Would that change your opinion so much? Do you trust Rosie so little now? You valued her before."

"Did you know what she was?"

His shadow rippled at his back, like a candle in the wind, no doubt from the harsh bite of his tone. "Of course I did."

"Why not say so to me?"

"It was... irrelevant."

"So you surmised," Alastor huffed. "But Charlie made a good point - Rosie's alliance is tenuous at best. She did this at the behest of another being-"