Esoterica 1: Liam's Awakening: A Lovecraftian Fantasy Harem Adventure (Esoterica Chronicles)

by Virgil Knightley

  I exited the elevator on the seventh floor, heading to my room, ready to unlock the door. Opposite my room was another room with a bit of a commotion going on inside. I glanced over to it and noticed that the door was partially opened. I looked inside out of curiosity, expecting to find a student practicing spells or something like that. That’s not what I saw.

  “You have to be shitting me,” I uttered in abject shock.

  Memento Morikawa looked at me through the open crack. “How the hell did you find me? I forgot to give you my room number!” she squealed, walking toward the door with a bloodied knife in her hand.

  “I live here,” I said, tapping my door, only five feet away and directly across from hers.

  She eyed me up and down. Her lips parted in surprise and curiosity, and her mind seemed to be exploding with possibilities at the big reveal. The corners of her lips quickly upturned into a mischievous smile. “Oh, we’re going to be excellent neighbors,” she grinned.

  I grinned back at her. “Can I come in?”

  “Only if you’ll lend me some sugar,” she said with a devilish grin as she temptingly twirled a lock of pink hair around her finger.

  “Okay, this has gone far enough,” a familiar voice said from down the hall. Carmilla. Shit.

  “Hey Carmilla,” I said through a sigh.

  “Do you have a problem?” Memento asked with irritation. It was maybe the first time she directly acknowledged Carmilla, so perhaps that was progress?

  “My problem is you,” she said. “You’re a rude bitch, and he’s too good for you.”

  “And you’re somehow good enough?” Memento asked with amusement.

  I couldn’t keep silent. This was already poised to end badly. “Okay, let’s all call it a night. There’s no need for this to be a big deal right now. We just need to come to an understanding, but that’s not about to happen now,” I tried to reason. I didn’t see it working.

  “The second I leave,” Carmilla said, “That goth bitch will be scratching at your door like a cat in heat.”

  “Oh please,” Memento said, rolling her eyes, but she was blushing. “I didn’t think you were the type to go steady with a vampire, Liam.”

  “It’s definitely more complicated than that,” I answered with a slight groan. “Carmilla, what if I go with you for the night. Would that satisfy you? And we can talk this out, maybe with Dahlia.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” she said crossly. “I saw everything that happened tonight.”

  I blinked in surprise. “How is that even possible?”

  “I followed you, transformed into a bat.”

  We’d need to have a stern chat about boundaries at some point. “Well, then you know that nothing has happened between us, and I was just doing her a favor so she could help Brian.”

  She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, biting her lip. “Yeah, I know that.”

  “So? What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “Are you about to tell me you weren’t going to fuck her?” she said.

  “Oh, I was absolutely going to fuck him,” Memento growled. “And I will, one way or the other, just to spite you at this point.”

  “That’s… not helpful, Memento,” I said. Even as I said it, though, I had to discreetly adjust my pants to address the tightening I was experiencing due to a rapidly growing erection. It was a new experience having two hot supernatural sorceresses fighting over me. I’d seen enough porn to know that there was a best-case scenario where we ended in a tense but hot three-way, and my groin was already committed to the idea of this timeline unfolding. Still, my mind knew full well that wasn’t where this conversation was headed.

  “I will kill this bitch if you sleep with her, Liam,” Carmilla said flatly.

  Welp. Shit. There that was. I believed her, too. By the look in Memento’s eyes, and her apparent loss for words as her lips tripped over themselves, failing to speak, I knew she believed it as well. I was growing tired of this really quickly.

  “Enough,” I said firmly but quietly.

  Carmilla shook her head. “No, I—”

  “Enough!” This time my voice boomed supernaturally loudly, knocking the two of them down to the ground and shaking the doors of the entire floor on their frames. A few people peered out into the hallway but quickly locked themselves back in their rooms after they had had just one look at me.

  Memento shuddered. “Liam, your eyes—”

  I didn’t let her finish. “I’m going to bed in my room. Alone. Carmilla, you and I will talk about this, with Dahlia, in the morning. Memento, you do whatever you want. But you owe me, don’t forget it. I’m expecting your help with Brian.”

  She looked up at me frightfully. “R-Right,” she said. It took everything I had in the way of self-control not to look up her skirt. If I wanted I could see directly into it from this angle the way she lifted her legs as she prepared to stand. I decided an even more obviously raging boner would probably hinder my authoritativeness, though, so, perhaps with a conspicuous stiffness, I walked into my room and slammed the door behind me, locking it, leaving the two of them on their asses in the hallway.

  Just another fucking day in the life of a necromantic harem-magus, I guess.

  Chapter 23

  Professor Whately

  Breakfast the following day was tense. Once Carmilla and Dahlia had both arrived, I shuttled them off with a word of apology to the rest of the gang for a private conversation.

  Dahlia looked worried and confused, a look that pained me to see on her flawless face. “What’s wrong?” she said, frantically eyeing the two of us and our discordant auras. “What happened last night?

  “He was about to bang the goth bitch when I intervened,” Carmilla said, staring at the table.

  Dahlia looked shocked. “Carmilla! How could you!?” she exclaimed. Her surprise turned to anger. “I told you to trust me! It was going to work out, but you fucked it up!”

  Carmilla and I looked at one another, searching the other’s face for answers. “Umm, Dahlia?” I began, “Care to share what the actual hell you’re talking about?”

  She sighed an exaggerated sigh, and I was sure she rolled her eyes, but it was hard to tell due to their uniquely cosmic nature. She pointed at those two same eyes and said, “Hello? I see auras,” she said. “She’s a perfect fit for the harem. I know you felt it, Liam.”

  I did. “So we fucked that up.”

  Dahlia shook her head. “Not necessarily. How badly did it go?”

  “I promised her if she ever slept with Liam, I’d kill her,” Carmilla said, hiding her face in her hands. Dahlia and I both cringed—me at the memory of it, and Dahlia at the severity of Carmilla’s error.

  “Okay, so it didn’t go great,” she admitted. “But it’s not too late.”

  “Can’t it be too late?” Carmilla whined. “I don’t like her.”

  To my shock, Dahlia slapped Carmilla across the face, and not a light slap. “Be a freaking team player, Carmilla, for Nodens’s sake!”

  Carmilla’s eyes welled up with bloody tears, but she didn’t cry, not really. “Sorry,” she said softly. That was all. I felt bad for her and shocked at Dahlia, even if I knew she was only looking out for the future of the harem.

  “That’s not necessary, Dah—”

  “Liam, Carmilla, we can still fix this,” Dahlia said, interrupting me, pounding her fist into her other hand, demonstrating her determination. “I have a four-person assignment scheduled two days from now. We’re going together,” she said. “And I want to invite Memento.”

  Carmilla whined gratingly, like a spoiled child, looking up at the ceiling in frustration and kicking her feet against the table. “This suuucks!”

  “She’ll grow on you,” Dahlia said confidently, her feet rubbing against my leg under the table.

  “You’d better be right,” the vampire girl replied crossly. “Fuck!” she threw a fork at the wall in frustration. My fork, for the record. It hit the wall hard and
clattered to the floor, attracting even more attention and scrutinizing glances from everyone in the dining hall.

  “What’s your plan for the day, honey?” Dahlia asked me, ignoring Carmilla’s puerile outburst.

  “I’m not sure yet,” I admitted. “I was thinking about trying to slip in a short solo assignment if possible.”

  She looked like she had just remembered something. “You should go talk to Professor Whately!” she said. “Most assignments are supposed to involve partners, but he can create custom assignments at special request. If you have any kind of favor with the Headmistress, then he’ll probably cave in right away,” she said with a giggle.

  I thought of the amulet she gave me. I pulled it out of my pocket.

  “Yeah, that should do it,” she said, eyes widened. “Usually only professors have her amulet, and she may not even answer it when called upon from what I heard.”

  “I bet she’d answer me,” I said.

  Carmilla perked back up. “Dare you to activate it now.”

  I looked at her mischievously. “Triple-Dog Dare me?” I held the amulet up suggestively.

  Dahlia threw her hands up immediately, “No! Do NOT piss off the Headmistress on a dare, Liam!”

  Carmilla sighed, looking irritated again. “You’re such a pain in the tit sometimes,” she said, pouting.

  “You love me anyway,” Dahlia replied, fluttering her eyelashes sweetly at her.

  “Dracula help me, I do,” Carmilla sighed.

  “What are you girls doing today?” I asked.

  “Class,” Carmilla said. “Then no big plans.”

  “Same,” Dahlia corroborated.

  I opened my mouth to speak something just as Dahlia’s foot pushed my leg against my bag where it rested on the blood. Suddenly I remembered the book that the Headmistress had given me to pass on to Dahlia. I pulled the book out of my bag and watched Dahlia’s eyes literally glow with recognition. Her lips parted with a soft gasp as her hand opened involuntarily, imagining herself clutching the book.

  “Where did you get that?” she asked in a solemn whisper.

  “I picked it up on a mission. The Headmistress suggested you might be interested in it, so here it is.” I could tell from her face that the Headmistress had been very correct. Dahlia was in awe of the gift.

  “This is… This is going to be very useful for me,” she said, her eyes fixed on the book. “Thank you so much. I owe you a huge favor.”

  I fervidly shook my head. “That’s nonsense. There are no favors between us. If you need something, I’ll do it anytime, no questions asked.”

  She kissed me on the cheek and I twitched from the intense pleasurable feeling it gave me. “Same here. All the same, please don’t hesitate to let me know if you ever need my help.”

  My mind flew back to the Headmistress. I thought about whether I should make a request or not. Eventually, though, my curiosity got the better of me. “I’m rather curious about the Headmistress, now that we’ve brought her up. She is weirdly… invested in my success,” I observed aloud.

  The two sorceresses looked at each other. “So, you want us to do some digging? Like at the library? School records? That kind of thing?” Carmilla asked.

  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know where to start, and I don’t want to attract attention because I’m sure I’m being watched. But maybe you two can get away with it.”

  “I’m in,” Dahlia instantly committed. “No problem, anything for you,” she continued, batting her eyelashes as she suggestively ate a banana. Her fingers were already flipping through the pages of the tome I’d handed to her. But her eyes were still mostly fixed on me, glancing back at the book for an instant every several seconds or so.

  “Sure, I’ll help,” Carmilla agreed. “Of course.”

  “Thanks, girls. I’ll check on you whenever I get back from my solo mission.”

  I found my way back to the building with all the professors’ offices. It was the same building that the Headmistress’s office was in, and to my astonishment, I had walked by Professor Whately’s office every single time I’d visited this building to meet Headmistress Waite.

  I knocked at the door. It was far less decorative than the Headmistress’s—even dull, but I noticed a faint green mist escaping through the bottom of the door where there was a narrow crack between the door and floor.

  “Professor Whately?” I said, knocking. Office hours were posted beside the door in a gold-leaf plaque. He should be here.

  A few moments later, I heard rustling and clattering come from inside the room. “Hold on!” a voice exclaimed. “I’ll be right there!”

  I looked around. There were maybe a dozen offices here, and a couple of students were having open-door meetings with their professors, probably their advisers, at this exact moment. I couldn’t hear what they were discussing, but everyone seemed to be scheming and plotting just as much as my girls and me. It was a sobering thought. I’d been so wrapped up in my own little bubble that I’d forgotten how powerful and how much more experienced almost everyone here probably was. They all had their own plans and aspirations, entirely separate from me. It was a humbling reminder.

  The door finally opened. A handsome man with silvery hair and a well-trimmed goatee answered it wearing a white lab coat, covered in blood and goop of some kind or another.

  “So sorry to keep you waiting, please come in,” he said in a sincere manner that contrasted humorously with the gore covering him. “Please, have a seat.”

  I pulled out a wooden chair beside his desk, clearly the less comfortable chair laid out for guests, and he took the other much more cushioned chair. We sat in unison, and he spoke first.

  “I’m so sorry, I don’t recognize you from any of my classes,” he said.

  I smiled. “I’m actually privately tutored by Headmistress Waite,” I explained.

  He put on a pair of thin-framed spectacles that was previously hanging in his coat pocket and squinted to get a better look at me. “So you’re Liam, then?”

  “The one and only,” I chuckled. “My reputation precedes me, then?”

  He shook his head, “I haven’t heard much. It just came up in the faculty meeting this morning that there was a student on the registrar’s list who hadn’t attended a single class but who’d been on multiple missions already. Ms. Waite mentioned that she was ‘taking care of your education,’” he said with aggressive finger quotes.

  “Well, the rumors are true,” I said, and he pulled out the Headmistress’s amulet. Professor Whately blinked and squinted, clearly surprised to see the medallion in a student’s hands.

  “Wow, she hasn’t even given one of these to Professor Hazelmire yet,” he noted. He sat up straight again, looking me in the eyes, businesslike. “So what can I do for you? I assume you didn’t walk here for the exercise.”

  “I was wondering if I could get a solo assignment crystal tailor-made for me?”

  He squirmed a bit, taken aback by the forward request. “Mission crystals don’t grow on trees. What exactly do you mean by ‘tailor-made’?”

  “Just something that a necromancer would be well-suited for,” I suggested.

  “A necromancer, eh? Hmm…” He opened a drawer and pulled out a file, flipping through several pages. “Here’s a mission in a graveyard,” he said. “There’s a crypt that needs raiding. I’ll give you the brief. It’s marked as a two-person mission, but if you are able to raise minions it should be easy enough.”

  I nodded and took the sheet from him. “And the crystal?”

  “I’ll have it made today. Your room number?”

  “704,” I replied.

  “Sign here.” I complied. “It’ll be sent to your room within the hour.”

  I shook his hand. “Deeply appreciated, Professor.” And then I remembered something. “By the way, one of my friends, Brian Adder, recently lost an arm.”

  I saw him cringe at the mention of Brian’s name. I recalled Randolph once mentioned that he and the pro
fessor had a… special relationship.

  “Do you know of anything that might be able to help him recover the use of that arm?” I asked. I had accepted the help of Memento, but I wanted to hedge my bets and have a backup plan in case that didn’t work or went horribly wrong.

  He shook his head. “I’m mostly a Divinations expert, but Brian’s a great student. I’d ask the Headmistress about that. Necromancy or some very advanced healing magic would be required. Is that all?” His face betrayed nothing, but I could tell the question made him antsy. Maybe I’d been hanging around Dahlia long enough to be able to pick up a bit of someone’s aura, or perhaps it was just my imagination, but I could tell he knew Brian better than he was about to admit right here and right now.

  In any case, I’d gotten what I’d come for. Just one thing left to do before I headed out on my own—I needed to invite Memento to join Dahlia’s assignment.

  That would be fine. No problem. I was sure it would be fine.

  Gulp.

  Chapter 24

  An Invitation

  I returned to my room on the seventh floor, but before I opened the door, I stopped and turned around to face the entrance to the room I knew belonged to Memento. I took a deep breath and walked up to the door. I knocked.

  “Who is it?” her voice rang out from inside.

  “Who do you think?” I said.

  There was a pause. “One second, I’m naked!” I desperately fiddled with the door handle. Curses. Locked. Foiled again. “Fucking perv!” she cried out in an amused tone.

  Finally, the door opened, and I was taken aback to find the pink-haired goth beauty standing in front of me wearing a rainbow unicorn pajama onesie, or kigurumi. It was buttoned up just to the center of her breasts, so I was blessed with a heaping spoonful of cleavage. She was also shorter than I remembered. The boots, I figured. The boots were high-heeled. Now she stood almost a full head and a half shorter than me. I made a show of looking down on her as she opened the door.