“I’m sure we can work on your petition some other time,” Carmilla said in her charming voice, laughing and sticking out her tongue playfully.
“Don’t make light of my dream,” Randolph whined with a mouthful of some kind of muffin or another.
Carmilla rolled her eyes in as dramatic and exaggerated a manner as she could manage, and then she turned over to the white-haired girl that I couldn’t stop staring at and who, I noticed, seemed to be pretty focused on me, as well. “Dahlia, honey, can you spot me a bite?”
Dahlia forced herself to break her gaze with me as she smiled politely at Carmilla and nodded, gently offering her wrist. Carmilla wasted no time in chomping down and did not seem to return much gentleness. Dahlia squirmed a bit but was otherwise unbothered. Her eyes slowly found their way back to me, I sensed, but I was more fixated on the display of open vampirism happening right in front of me at the moment.
“So this is normal?” I asked, wincing at the sight.
“I beg your fucking pardon?” Carmilla lifted her head with scorn as blue blood dripped down her face. Yes, blue.
“Now you’ve gone and fucked up,” Randolph said, kicking his boots onto the table and leaning back with his arms crossed behind his head.
“Put your fucking feet back on the ground,” Evelyn hissed as her forked tongue thrashed at the air. Randolph sheepishly complied, to Brian’s apparent amusement—the musclebound sorcerer chuckled at his friend.
“I’m sorry, this is all pretty new to me,” I said, feeling bad for reacting the way I had. “Four hours ago, I didn’t know vampires existed, and now I’m eating breakfast with one.”
Dahlia leaned back in her chair and her skin glowed as Carmilla withdrew from her wrist. My eyes widened as her pale flesh shimmered with a mystic light.
“It’s fine,” Carmilla said as she watched Dahlia raise her arm and inspect it. The light radiating from Dahlia was now centered on the puncture wounds Carmilla had been drinking from, and within moments they vanished, and Dahlia looked refreshed once more. I thought better than to acknowledge it. I was sure I’d learn everything in time. I should focus on more prudent questions, if anything.
“So, wait, can I ask you all something?” I said, sitting up straight, trying to work my courage up.
The whole table looked at me curiously. “Go for it, lad,” Evelyn said with an eyebrow cocked in anticipation.
“Well, I’m a necromancer. Do you guys have, like, a specialty, too?”
“Of course, we all do,” Carmilla said. “I think I mentioned that I’m an enchantress primarily, right?”
“Oh, yeah, I kind of remember that.”
“But I also have magic and powers specific to vampires of my type, too,” she added.
“Illusion and Conjuration, here,” Brian said with a mouthful of food.
“Elementalism for me, love,” said Evelyn. “Especially fire.”
“Divination,” said Dahlia. It was the first word she spoke to me.
Randolph cleared his throat. “I’m a bit special like you, actually,” he started, eliciting eye rolls from the girls. “I’m a jack of all trades. I have a pretty even, moderate level of potential in every type of magic, making me an effective duelist.”
“Yeah, that’s rare,” Carmilla said, nodding. “Usually, it’s limited to weak potential with most kinds, and higher potential with one or two specific schools of magic.”
“We call those Affinities,” Dahlia said. Her voice was soft and beautiful—and almost made me shiver.
“So my ‘Affinity’ is Necromancy,” I said, nodding. I’d heard the word a few times now and had put together what it meant.
Dahlia jerked her head in confirmation. It was cute and awkward, but there was nothing awkward about the way she looked. “I can see it in your aura now,” she said. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Brian and Randolph exchanging knowing looks.
I used her engagement as an excuse to stare at her again. “My aura?”
“Dahlia can see auras. It’s the gift of her kind,” Evelyn explained, leaning her head onto Dahlia’s shoulder.
“I can taste them, too,” she said.
I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really? What does mine taste like?”
She blushed, making me suddenly nervous that it might have been an awkward question. The exchange didn’t seem to get lost on the others, either. Just then, a little black gecko crawled onto her shoulder from somewhere behind her. The gecko had a peculiar pattern on its face, resembling a human skull.
“Oscar!” she exclaimed, and then she held the creature up and stared directly at it. The table grew silent.
“What’s happening?” I whispered to Carmilla.
“They’re communicating telepathically,” she said. “Oscar is her familiar.”
“I figured that much,” I said with a nod.
Carmilla suddenly pivoted to everyone else and seemed to want to fill the silence. “Is anyone leaving on an assignment soon?”
“An assignment?” I asked before anyone could answer her question.
“Like a mission. Sometimes we’re given special tasks to test what we’ve learned,” Carmilla explained. “Practical applications. They can be sort of like… field trips.”
“What kind of tasks?” I asked.
“Killing Void Shamblers, slaying Nightgaunts, butchering Proto-Shoggoths, recovering lost artifacts, discovering new universes, that sort of thing. Nothing major,” Brian said, patting his gut. He was built well. His abdomen was probably normally quite impressive, but at the moment, it was distended from the big meal he’d gorged himself with.
“That sounds… pretty major to me,” I said, my eyes probably broadcasting my level of intimidation.
“It’s not all monsters. I stopped a group of cultists trying to summon a malevolent transdimensional deity,” Carmilla said.
“Oh?” I perked up in my chair. That sounded fascinating. “How did you stop them?”
“Killed ‘em all,” she shrugged, wiping a bit of blue blood from her chin.
“Ah,” I said with a gulp. “That’ll do it.” This would surely be an adjustment.
Randolph seemed to clock my squeamishness. “Don’t stress, dude. You’ll fit in in no time. It was a lot for me to take in when I first got here, too.”
I only managed to stare back at him blankly in response, my mouth agape as though I wanted to say something, but no words came to me.
“The gift rarely chooses someone that can’t handle it,” Evelyn added with a grin. “You’ll be fine.”
We all ate in silence for the next twenty minutes or so, interrupted every so often by pleasant conversation and the sort of ‘getting to know you’ questions that inevitably accompany any first meeting. The meal passed too quickly, and although I was nervous around my peers, with their cavalier natures, I was thrilled to be among them.
And then the girls left to head to the restroom together.
Randolph and I instantly leaned toward one another with an urgency that made Brian groan and throw his eyes back in his head in annoyance. He knew what was coming next.
“Dude, so what’s up with these ladies?” I asked. “Are they single? Available? What’s the situation?”
“Okay, so let me throw it down for you,” Randolph said, cracking his knuckles and licking his lips. “The three of them are all single. But there are also tons of options everywhere if you just open your eyes.”
I scoped the room out more carefully now that the ladies from our table were gone. He was right. The room was full of young women, primarily early to late twenties, some maybe even slightly younger than that. There were surprisingly few men, and they all looked comparatively vanilla next to the colorful otherworldly females in the room.
“Why are there hardly any dudes here?” I asked.
“Ugh, don’t get me started,” Brian groaned.
“Just a higher frequency of magic ability in women, for whatever reason,” he said with a shrug.
Brian i
nterrupted. “Mainly, hybrids like Dahlia and Evelyn, which are always likely to be magical in nature, tend to be born female.”
“Wow, so we are literally surrounded by beautiful women—”
“—Who all have few better options!” Randolph finished. The two of us high-fived giddily.
“Are either of you seeing anyone?” I asked after a moment of continued scoping.
“Well, I’m gay, in case you missed it,” Brian said. “But actually, yes. I’m kind of seeing someone.”
“He’s boinking Professor Whately,” Randolph whispered as he jabbed his buddy in the ribs.
“You’re fucking a professor?!” I blurted it out way too loud.
“Sweet Yog-Sothoth, is it a federal case now? Calm the fuck down,” Brian said as he looked around nervously.
“Sorry,” I said, suddenly whispering. I put my fingers to my lips, trying to show my commitment to keeping it quiet, but it was too late for that.
“As for me, I’m also single—”
“But very sexually active,” Brian added.
“I do get around from time to time. Sometimes girls on campus. Sometimes on extended assignments. Damsels in distress, that kind of thing.”
“Cool, any tips for me?” I asked, fascinated. “Do I seem like anyone’s type?”
“Ehh, I think Carmilla honestly is vibing with you, and obviously—”
“Dahlia has the hots for you, no doubt,” Brian interrupted.
“Really?” I was surprised to hear that. I definitely noticed her looking, but to think someone as pretty as her would single me out romantically, or otherwise... I’d figured she was just quirky. “She seems so quiet.”
“She’s like that. She’ll open up once you get to know her,” Brian said. “She rarely talks with new people around, but she spoke to you directly, which is a sign for sure. And she was staring at you—aggressively.”
Randolph had his chin resting on his fist as he nodded thoughtfully. “I noticed it, too. I’m sure everyone did.”
“What is she, by the way?” I asked. Then I leaned in, embarrassed. “Shit, was that insensitive?”
“It’s fine. She’s a Starchild. Human mother, celestial father,” Randolph explained.
“What is a celestial?” I asked. There was a lot of terminology to keep up with.
“Beats me. I never asked. That’s all I’ve heard.”
“Fair enough.”
The girls found their way back to the table shortly after that. Carmilla tapped me on the shoulder lightly, surprising me just seconds after I had uttered something to Randolph about her tight body that I was suddenly glad that she probably didn’t hear.
Carmilla smiled warmly at me as she stretched her arms above her head. “Come on, necromancer, it’s time to see what freaky familiar you get stuck with.”
Chapter 6
Getting Familiar
I didn’t think I’d be back in that place so soon. I sat at the center of the pentagram that heralded my arrival at Esoterica only several hours earlier. Once again, I was at the top of a mountain looking out at the wickedly alien landscape. It was still equal parts intimidating and impressive to me, but there were other tasks to focus on at the moment.
“So, the ritual of summoning your familiar for the first time is a relatively simple one, but you have to get it right. If you mess up once, you may end up without a familiar for your whole career as a sorcerer,” Carmilla explained, donning her self-serious scholarly voice again.
“That’s harsh,” I noted.
“I don’t make the rules, Mr. Elloway,” she said with an impressively pathetic attempt at a wink, ultimately ending in something looking more like she had experienced a mini-stroke. It was so bad I almost cringed, but so cute I almost grinned.
“Anywaaaay,” she continued after recovering, “for this ritual, you will need a blood sacrifice: mine and yours.”
“Whoa,” I said with a gasp. “You’re going to donate your blood to my ritual?”
“It’s a tradition. This is the role of all Integration Assistants,” she explained with pride in her voice.
“Well, thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” she said. She beamed at me with obvious self-satisfaction. “You have your spell focus ready to go, don’t you?” She gestured toward the cane.
I grunted a confirmation as I held it up, the ruby catching a bit of alien moonlight.
“The ritual requires us to bleed into the center of the summoning circle until the lines surrounding its central pentagram are filled with our mingling blood.”
“And then I say some magic words?” I asked.
“No, actually,” Carmilla shook her head. “We join hands, and I help induce an astral meditative state in you.”
“A what?”
“An out-of-body experience. You’ll be projecting your consciousness into the realm of the spirits, and that is where your familiar will find you. And I will be your anchor to pull you back when you’re done.”
“Wait, how will I know what to do when I’m, uh, astrally meditative or whatever?” I asked frantically. Carmilla was already inspecting a jagged ritual dagger as she plopped down on the ground facing me, kneeling instead of going cross-legged so as not to give me too great a view of her in her short dress. She looked up at me impatiently, so I stopped delaying and joined her on the ground.
“Just figure it out. It’s different for everyone anyway,” she shrugged. “Put your focus on your lap. It’ll help me anchor you.”
I had that nervous reaction I used to have when I had to go on stage for a school play or a piano recital, that sick feeling in my gut that was trying to make me believe that if I didn’t leave now I’d crap my pants, but I ignored it. I was well past the point of no return, and something told me this was a cut above my high school production of My Fair Lady.
“Okay,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”
“Slash!” Carmilla shouted as she gripped my wrist and opened a vein with a quick, practiced gesture. Blood began pouring from the stinging wound, and she held my arm and shook it vigorously—as if that’d help—over the circle and watched the pentagram outline begin to fill with blood.
She bit her lip and whined. “Awww fuck. This makes me so horny,” she sighed in agitation as she longingly watched the blood drip from my wrist.
“There’s a lot I’d like to unpack in what you just said,” I began, “Not the least of which is did you just shout ‘slash’ as you cut me?”
“Don’t question my methodology,” she said with a dismissive wave. She then cut herself with the same dagger and dripped her own blood into the pentagram. She didn’t shout anything this time, perhaps self-conscious from my questioning her—but I caught her mouthing something as she performed the action on herself.
The pentagram’s grooves filled up with our combined contributions, and as it did, I became sensitive to a change in the atmosphere around me.
“Do you feel that?” I asked. “Feels like the air got thicker all of a sudden.”
“That means it’ll work,” Carmilla said with a toothy grin. Her fangs were out in full force, and her eyes had dilated, her sclera entirely black now. She ground her knees together tighter and adjusted her posture. “Take my hands, Liam.”
I did as I was told. She began reciting a long passage in the ancient language we used for spellcasting. I waited awkwardly for the effect of the spell to take place. Just when I thought maybe it wasn’t working, I found myself floating in what looked to be space, surrounded by stars, except that I felt as though my body was on scale with them, as though the closest stars were only a few dozen yards from me. They seemed to be only about the size of the palm of my hand at the largest. They floated around freely, moving past me—or was I moving past them? I couldn’t tell.
Around me was only a midnight blue void on all sides, speckled with what seemed like infinite stars. It felt calming. Beautiful.
And then I felt something; a warmth visited itself upo
n me, a warmth that writhed and moved and tried to prod at me, understand me. It was more than warmth. It was a consciousness.
Here I am, it seemed to say. No, it did say it. I could hear it in my head, though faintly. I tried to send a message back to the spirit.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
You can call me Uther, it said. Now I could make out the voice as clear as day. It was ethereal and deep, and decidedly masculine.
“Are you my familiar?”
Yes, I can tell that I am the one who was meant to be bonded to you.
“How do we do this, then?”
Just simply open your eyes, and there I’ll be.
I tried to open my eyes, but at first it was jarring to attempt because in this place, this abyss, my eyes were already open. After a failed attempt, though, I called my thoughts back to Carmilla, my anchor, and I willed it to happen.
I suddenly became aware of my real, physical body again, and the world settled back into focus. Not more than two feet from my face was the beautiful grinning visage of Carmilla, fangs and all, who beamed at me with more enthusiasm than ever before.
“You did it!” she exclaimed, doing jazz hands in celebration.
“Did I? Where is he?”
“Look down, dummy.”
On my lap was a small arctic fox, curled up comfortably. “Uther, is that you? You’re… cute!” I exclaimed.
The fox stretched and walked off of my lap. When Uther finally opened his eyes, I jerked in surprise. Carmilla looked like she may have peed herself. His two big eyes were a deep twilight blue, like the night sky, and in them were countless twinkling stars.
The three of us sat in silence. It was so palpable that Carmilla’s vampire squirrel, Sheridan, saw fit to summon himself for a look to see what the fuss was about. After an eternity of discomfort, Carmilla shot a downward accusatory look at me.
“You think I fucking know how this happened?!” I protested, throwing my hands up dramatically to emphasize my innocence.
“Seriously, why the fuck does your familiar look like someone turned Dahlia into a fox,” she asked.
Esoterica 1: Liam's Awakening: A Lovecraftian Fantasy Harem Adventure (Esoterica Chronicles) Page 5