Chapter 5: Slightly Greasy Protection is Still Protection

All three of the Dauftima sisters looked at the door that the knock had issued forth from.

Their visitor had ominous timing.

“Oh! That must be Wauldigg!” Qusheab cried out.

Her eyes lost a bit of their light, but before she could bound out of the messy ward they had made, Jadah and Koolah grabbed her.

“Tch, I thought this was pretty good for a makeshift ward too” Koolah complained.

“It can’t be helped, we are just brew witches after all.” Jadah consoled.

She turned Qusheab to face her.

“Are you quite alright now?” Jadah asked her.

Qusheab was shivering a bit.

“That was dangerous, we need better protection, here, I’ll delay him” Qusheab said.

Jadah released her sister after double checking to see if she was acting free from the loop.

“I’m terribly sorry, could you wait a moment, we’re all a bit tangled up at the moment!” Qusheab shouted.

“Not a problem, it’s pretty safe around your cottage” Wauldigg called through the door.

“I wish it was” Koolah muttered.

Jadah busied herself with stabilizing the ward they were in. Qusheab clapped her paws.

“Well, sorted that issue out for the moment, but what are we going to do now?”

Koolah closed her eyes, arranging her thoughts. What did they know?

They had come to this place to brew something, but they made full preparations. However… their memories were torn, and their preparations damaged, stolen or destroyed. This really wasn’t enough to go off on, but the torn memories suggested an act of brutality, something that didn’t have finesse, or just the ability to gently manipulate the mind.

Of course it was possible that some kind of accident happened rather than a malicious entity.

Koolah wasn’t nearly naïve enough to believe that. Her experience told her that this had happened due to some being’s will. She gazed deeper into her self, trying to find a clue in her spirit.

“Oooh” Qusheab began “This is really really bad. We spent a lot to get those protective necklaces, they weren’t the kind of thing that we could make.”

“Don’t worry I’ll figure something… out?”

Koolah opened her eyes. She had seen something quite disturbing in her patterns.

“Sisters, check yourselves for death essence” She commanded.

All things in the dimension that Kigan resides in have various essences, or elements, though elements are usually reserved for fundamental things, like the prime elements of Vim and Chaos.

An apple for will have patterns that are filled with apple essence, and of course being the fruit of a tree, Vim and tree essences.

Death essence is of course something that a dead thing would have.

Jadah and Qusheab’s eyes widened in horror however as they made the same discovery as Koolah had.

They had more death essence than was usual.

“I see you’ve both come to the conclusion I have. Somehow, we died in the loop” Koolah said.

“W-well at least we’ll be fine as long as we are alive when we get out of the loop right?” Qusheab worried.

“That is how it works” Jadah said, looking up from an obscure symbol she was drawing with a split yolk.

“All of us are alive right now, and I plan to keep it that way!” Koolah declared.

“We need protection first, right? Right? Ummm resonance?” Qusheab suggested.

Resonance! A simple principal part of spellcasting in Kigan. If you wanted a firey spell, get together firey things, or try casting it in volcano! Thus even a weak mage can exploit the essences in the patterns around them, in the very flow of magic itself to achieve their desire!

“Good idea. None of us have an affinity for loop magic or time magic or whatever it is” Koolah grumbled.

“A weave of hair, three in one in three! Our minds, our spirits supporting each other!” Jadah declared, her voice taking on a echo.

With that each of them pulled some strands of hair out and weaved them together in a plait. Koolah severed the plait into three parts with a minor bladed wind that her hat granted her.

“Divided, once together, bound and unbounded, our spirits unsullied, dyed in blood and essence.”

The three sisters bit their paws and allowed blood to drip on the plaits, but with the blood were traces of magic power. White for Jadah, Green for Qusheab and a greeny blue for Koolah.

The instant the drops hit, the plaits were covered in simmering light.

Qusheab prepared the next part. Her green eyes shining.

She dumped the plaits in the frying pan and held them over a fire.

“Charms of self, devourers of ward and weal, three to protect three. A gentle force, not breaking or being broken. With this we guard ourselves. Rise, rise and keep us apart and together”

The messy impromptu ward around the three sisters glowed and floated around them, before flowing into the pan and into the plaits, sizzling coming from it. Koolah and Jadah stood either side of Qusheab, urging the flow of magic onward, even lending what pathetic sparks from their heartflames that they had.

The fire died, consumed by the plaits, one white, one green, one teal. They floated upwards and towards the sisters. Each grasped their charm.

Thus the ritual ended.

“They’re a little greasy” Qusheab complained.

“Oh bother it all Qushqush, did you really have to say that after we experienced such pure inspiration?” Koolah complained.

Not one part of the ritual they made was planned in advance, but the art of magic could be like that when the flow was with you. When the flow was against you however, well, things could get quite grim and messy. Still it wasn’t just anyone who could do something like that. You needed to immerse yourself in the study of magic. Even then it was partly due to the fact that the Dauftima sisters were brew witches that such a thing was possible.

Brew witches tended to be saturated in essences and every brewing was a ritual, and the sisters had been brewing magical concoctions for who knows how many days.

“She’s right though. They smell of salamander egg too” Jadah said.

Koolah threw up her paws in disgust.

“Well, if you two want to be consumed by the loop so badly be my guest!”

Jadah coughed.

“Speaking of guests, what should we do about ours?” she asked.

Qusheab tilted her head in puzzlement.

“Why, aren’t we going to let him in? It’s Wauldigg you know?”

“It could be” Koolah mused.

Qusheab went quite silent.

In a place such as they were, how could they guarantee that some entity wasn’t hiding inside the dwarf, or that had taken over him completely?