Fictional Fantasy Volume One (Completed)

Chapter Eight - Yuki Rey

I followed Rachel down the hallway. She knocked on the door to her apartment. When her mom answered, Rachel explained that she forgot her key. I anxiously followed her inside, maintaining invisibility the whole time. I kept my distance from them both, so as not to be discovered via bumping into someone. Rachel had my bag underneath her own in her lap. Once we were both in Rachel's room and the door was locked, I dropped the invisibility.

"I can't believe that worked." Rachel sent me the thought after attempting to communicate verbally to me.

"Well it is magic after all." I sat down on the floor, and leaned against the wall. I sat far from the door. "Why did you want to wait to do spells? You seemed excited when you first found the Grimoire."

"I did? I wasn't." She seemed somewhat confused. She paused a bit and then asked, "Tell me more about the amphibian lady."

"I already told you everything. It was weird. I really wanted to stay and talk to her but then I had to go to school." I stretched my leg out in front of me.

"Are you telling me that there was an opportunity for you to skip class and you didn't take it?"

"Well I wanted to but-" I stopped, dumbly realizing something I should've already. "She can control minds."

"She can control minds and she used it to make you go to school?" Rachel stated blankly.

"I think she wanted me to talk to you and read more marks. She was watching us when we found that Grimoire, remember?" It was like she wanted us to find it. She'd said she was waiting for the right person, but maybe she specifically wanted us to find it.

"So mind control? What volume is that in?"

I shrugged and grabbed my copy of volume one and wrote "mind control" on the bottom of page seven. None of the spells listed were from volumes one or 18. Most of them were from volume 7. I checked the map. I could faintly see a dot a few miles from where we were but I could barely tell if it was even really there.

"Yeah, I think that she has Mind Control powers." I said, not answering her question. I tossed the book onto my backpack, which was laying on the floor next to me. 

"And she wants to use them to get you in class and me to agree to the Grimoire?"

"Well, you've already agreed to go through it on your own now," I pointed out.

"Only because I figured I might as well if I had the book, but now I think I didn't even want it in the first place." She stopped, seeming to come to a realization.

"What?" I stood up. "Are you going to report this? Even if you did you'll be held responsible because you waited. It's fine if you bail, but don't do anything stupid."

She glared at me. "I'm not- nevermind."

I sat back down, and opened up #18. The table of contents let me know that most of the marks inside would let me transform things. It was annoyingly specific with elemental codes or whatever they were called.  Most of the book was just of how to turn specific compositions into others, and I didn't understand it.

There was one thing that caught my attention, at the back. This mark would allow you to see underwater. I lifted up the flap and a squiggly line was drawn inside the circle on my back.

~

I spent a while going through the book and seeing if there was something else that would be useful to me. When I was done, I tossed Rachel the book. "Here. It's full of Sciency stuff that you like."

The lights were off, Making it hard to see Rachel, but it wasn't long before the glow of the Grimoire was visible from where Rachel was stationed in the room. I laid down on my stomach, after grabbing and opening up my copy of volume 1.

I'd already gone through the book a few times, but I hadn't really sat down and read all the pages yet. Until now. I went through the book. The spells seemed very simplistic, despite the number of them. For several of them, I checked page seven and found that there were later volumes that had similar but more specific versions of the spells in volume one.

One of the spells in volume one that confused me as to its true purpose was about removing fingernails. It was about changing your finger or toe so that there as no nail. Intrigued I lifted the flap. The image was the Japanese symbol for 8.

八

I don't know if that was intentional. I took off my left shoe, and the sock, then stared at my foot. I concentrated on my pinky toe, and after a few seconds, the nail disappeared. In its place was just smooth skin.

"Hey, Rachel. You still awake?" I called out with my mind, not wanting to get up and check for the book's glow.

"I figured out how to magically remove toenails." I announced.

"Well I don't even have toenails in the first place so I don't know what I'm going to do with this information," was her reply.

I didn't say anything else, and instead looked back at the toe. I tried to bring back the nail with the mark, but it didn't work. I checked page seven, and one of the first spells in volume 2 was how to bring back nails.

When was this written where this was a necessary spell to have? Maybe the original wizard had a weird fetish.

I put the sock back on and resumed going through the book. Before  I went to sleep, I activated the invisibility mark in the hopes that I would be able to keep it up all night.