Loop Two - Chapter Twenty-Six - Rituals

Amber very quickly discovered that she wasn’t going to find what she was looking for.

The indexes they had were well-annotated and detailed, but the details they had were less-than-helpful. They didn’t always call out the names of the organisations a ritual-creator was part of, and Amber didn’t exactly have a list of Black Magi ritual makers.

I knew I was going into this with too little in terms of information, but… well, at least I know, I guess.

She closed a book and sighed.

“It’s no good?” Margaret asked timidly. The Heskor girl was still in the room with her. She’d found a seat and was reading away while Amber searched.

“No, no good. But thank you anyway, it’s at least enough to know that I won’t be finding them through these ritual books.”

“I’m sorry,” Margaret said with a wince.

Amber instantly felt bad for her. “Oh, hey, no,” she said as she reached over and patted Margaret on the shoulder. “It’s not your fault at all. It’s mine for getting into this half-cocked. Thanks. At least these rituals are all kind of interesting. Do you know if we have a lot of classes about these?”

“Ah, no, I looked ahead in our curriculum a little, and we have some classes like, ah Professor Ploof’s the other day, but it’s not much more than that.”

“Huh,” Amber said. Ritual magic was, like the professor had said, kind of vague and not immediately powerful, but it seemed like it was more versatile than any single kind of magic that Amber had seen so far.

Not that I’ve seen many. Cassy’s gravity magic, that healing magic, Jade’s strange pocket dimensions stuff, maybe a few others. And time magic, obviously. Ritual magic was less a kind of magic than a way to execute a magical ability without a specific gift with that kind of magic.

“I wonder if there’s any magic here that involves time travel,” Amber wondered.

Margaret glanced at her, then the index. “Probably?” she asked. Then she stood and put away one index to pull out another onto the desk. “Yeah, there’s a few.”

“Oh?” Amber asked. She found herself leaning over Margaret’s shoulder to take in a small list of time-related spells. Most seemed about predicting the future, but at least one ritual allowed someone to send something into the past, usually for healing an otherwise unhealable injury, or as she discovered, there were a couple of complex rituals to send thoughts back into the past.

Is that what I do? No, it’s not quite right.

“This is neat,” Amber said. “Do you think I can get a copy?”

“Um, your phone has a camera,” Margaret said. “You can take pictures of the pages. Or I think you can ask a librarian to make copies? The scroll might be old, so they’d need to do it for you.”

“Right,” Amber said. “Well, it was an idle question, I, ah, can do some of these things myself already. Anyway.” She patted her stomach. “I should get going, my team is going to be waiting for me.”

“Oh, right. Me too,” Margaret said.

“Will team Heskor be at the cafeteria?”

Margaret blinked, then she rather shyly pulled out her phone and checked it. “Um, yeah, Evelyn wants us to meet there soon.”

“Well, that’s perfect,” Amber said with a smile. “I’ll escort you back. It’s the least I can do, right?”

Margaret froze for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, yes please,” she blurted.

Amber smiled, then nodded to the door. She reminds me of a few introverted friends I had in highschool. I hope her team’s treating her well. She asked Margaret about the books she was reading, coaxing a conversation out of the girl as they crossed the library, then she held the door open for her and walked out with her.

“Oh, it’s getting dark already?” Amber asked. She reached for her phone, then realised she didn’t need it to know that it was nearing seven-thirty. What she did pull out her phone for was to check on her texts, which she had a number of.

Morgan Armstrong - 18:50: We’ll be waiting for you at the cafeteria soon.
Morgan Armstrong - 19:17: We’re waiting for you now.
Morgan Armstrong - 19:21: Are you well?

Amber winced. Her team were waiting for her for a while, then. She’d set her phone to quiet at some point and hadn’t realised it.

Cassy Bleriot - 18:10: Morgan is bulli
Cassy Bleriot - 18:51: Food
Cassy Bleriot - 19:15: wru?

Amber checked on the single message she got from Jade, then frowned in consternation at its contents.

Jade Singer - 19:22: Did you discover a cute girl in need of saving?

“My team’s being weird,” Amber said as she shoved her phone away. “Sorry, I probably shouldn’t be looking at my phone while I’m with someone, right?”

Margaret tucked her own phone away in a hurry and her face lit up. “It’s okay! It’s not, ah, it’s not anything special, right?”

“Hmm? Uh, anyway, is your team waiting for you?”

“They are,” she said. “But it’s okay.”

Amber grinned. “Come on, we can jog over. I need the exercise in any case, I think.”

Margaret blinked, but Amber just started jogging on the spot until Margaret picked up the pace and soon she was breathing heavily while Amber escorted her across the campus. It didn’t take too long to reach the cafeteria which was impressively full at the moment.

Amber spotted her team at one of the smaller tables to the side. Morgan had her arms crossed and was in a stare-off with Cassy. They notably didn’t have any food in front of them. Jade noticed her first, and started to wave, then saw Margaret.

That smile is worrisome, Amber thought as she noticed Jade’s grin.

“Where’s team Helskor?” Amber asked as she looked around some more.

“Ah, over there,” Margaret said. She was pointing across the room at one of the longer tables where Amber caught sight of Evelynn and one of the other Helskor girls.

They slipped through the crowd of magicals, and Amber smiled at the ambience. There was magic in the air, literally, and music from a few phones and even one boy in the corner, strumming away at an acoustic guitar.

Evelynn jumped to her feet, and Amber stepped aside and gestured Margaret forward. “Here you go,” she said.

“Thank you,” Margaret said with a little nod.

“Hey,” Evelynn said to Margaret, then she turned her attention towards Amber, and Amber could feel the suspicion wafting off of her. “Hello?”

“Hey,” Amber said. “What’s up? I was just guiding Margaret back, I, ah, stole her for a bit in the library. She helped me, I mean.”

“Oh,” Evelyn said. “Well, thank you for bringing her back, in any case. I was getting worried.”

“Did Mary come back?” Margaret asked.

Her answer was a shake of the head from Evelynn.

“Anyway, you guys have a good supper, I’ll go bug my own team for a bit. If you need anything Margaret, don’t hesitate, I figure I owe you one.”

“Thank you,” Margaret said.

Amber smiled, then waved and jogged over to her team.

“You’re back!” Cassy cheered. “Tell Morgan that she’s a dumb bitch.”

“I don’t think I will, no,” Amber said. “What were you arguing about?”

“Food,” Cassy said. “Morgan has awful tastes and insisted that we wait on you to get back before we ate.”

Amber sat down just as her entire team stood up. She froze for a moment, then stood back up and tried to pretend that hadn’t happened. “Well, you didn’t have to, but I appreciate it.”

“It’s good for building rapport,” Morgan said.

“What’s good for rapport is me not rapport’ing you for starving us,” Cassy muttered.

“I thought you were on some sort of diet?” Amber said.

“Watching my calories still means I need some. Besides, you weren’t here to see Miss Whips and Chains over here making us go through her ‘easy’ exercise routine.”

Morgan looked unimpressed, but a glance at the smile Jade was trying to hide and the hint of amusement in Cassy’s tone suggested that all was… perhaps not well but at least normal with her team.

They gathered up by the buffet tables, grabbed some trays, scanned their phones to pay for their lunch, then started picking up plates and filling them to the brim. Amber didn’t realise how hungry she was until she started scooping portions of mac and cheese (with bits of sausage!) into her plate.

They scurried back to their place, and for a while team Svalinn turned into a group of starving barbarians who couldn’t communicate in anything more than grunts and happy food-moans. Fortunately, that seemed to be the norm for magicals while eating, so they didn’t stand out.

“So,” Jade said after swallowing. “Who was that girl you were with? The cute one, with the books?”

Amber glanced up and found both Jade and Cassy paying close attention to her. “Oh, that’s Margaret. I met her in the library. She’s on team Heskor. She helped me out a bit.”

“That’s nice,” Cassy said.

“Isn’t it?” Jade said. “Did you find anything, by the way, or did you just spend the entire time with Margaret?”

“Hmm? Oh, she helped me find the ritual magic section. It’s actually pretty neat. Lots of weird, kinda useless spells, but some might be handy.”

“Ritual magic is flexible and potent,” Morgan said. “Though it can be slow, complex, and expensive to make up for that.”

“That’s what I noticed too,” Amber said. “I was looking for signs that, ah, the people we met invented any rituals or anything. Margaret thought that might be a good lead. Turned out to be a bit of a waste of time though.”

“You didn’t discover anything?” Morgan asked.

“I discovered that I might have been chasing the wrong lead, which I guess is something,” Amber said. “I’m sure there’s something about them in the library, but I haven’t found it yet. Maybe we can ask a librarian later or something.”

“That’s fair,” Morgan said. “Seconds?” she asked.

Amber looked to her plate. There were only a few bites left. “Yeah, sure.”

“I don’t know,” Cassy said.

But then Amber dragged her out of her seat from behind, and Cassy, laughing while she protested, came with them for seconds.

***