Carrot and Stick: How to Practice Responsible Witchcraft in a High-Crime Neighborhood - Chapter V

Chapter V

Chapter I started yesterday... Lemme know what you think plz <3

***

As it turned out, Carrot didn’t live all that far from the industrial sector of the city, which really didn’t surprise Silas too much. The city... stank. It had that constant clinging odour of hydrocarbons that he wasn’t used to, not when he lived in the rather clean conclave where magic had never been replaced by machine, not in some areas, at least.

“I think this is the one,” Carrot said. She had led them both pretty well, cutting through an alley and moving with surety across the city, though he noticed that she had slowed down to a pace that didn’t strain him quite as much.

The warehouse looked like it had been visited by the police. There was some tape by the front, though he didn’t notice any cops around at the moment.

“Oops? Um... gosh, I really hope they didn’t have cameras in there,” Carrot said. “I’m gonna be in so much trouble. I can’t go to jail, Mister Switchbranch. I’d come out of there a changed girl!”

“You’ll be fine, I’m sure,” he said.

The warehouse’s interior had been relatively dark, so any capture of her face would be indistinct, and he had probably been in frame. One of the many layered spells worked into his hat was one that helped muffle and disguise his presence on any modern surveillance equipment. The kind of spell that was so complex and yet mundane that it had probably taken some overworked Ordo Cognitio wizard a few years to scramble together.

If she was seen, then there were steps for that. He could call it in, report the entire situation, and since an Ordo member was nearby... well, he’d catch some flak, but it had been an emergency, and so the Ordo Oblivio would probably erase the footage. As long as Miss Cuddlesworth kept her mouth shut other than to ask for a lawyer, she’d be fine. 

His bigger concern was that his phone had been found and was now sitting in some evidence locker. If the data on there ended up on the internet, he could forget a black mark. The Ordo would put him out on the street with a bootprint on his rear, and that was if he was lucky.

“Come on, let’s go around back,” he said.

“Okay,” Carrot replied easily.

He retraced his steps from the day before, moving into the alley at the back of the warehouse. The door had another line of yellow tape over it, but that was all. He suspected that no one really cared that much, not when the warehouse didn’t seem to house all that much that was important in the first place.

“It’s probably locked,” Carrot said. 

“Let’s at least try it,” he replied before reaching over. The spell he’d used ought to have worn off by now, but... no, the door was still solidly locked. He sighed.

“We could ask?” Carrot tried. 

“I feel like that would only cause more issues,” Silas said. He touched the door, then started to  rummage through his pockets. He had something for this. “How would you like to learn how to use a magical tool?” he asked.

“Is it to commit crimes?” Carrot asked.

“It’s for a good cause?” He tried.

“That sounds like a slippery slope,” Carrot said as she crossed her arms. 

Sighing, he gestured to the still-shut door. “This won’t open on its own. Asking the people who own this place for assistance would be an admission of guilt, and honestly, we’re not here to harm anyone or anything. We’re going in, looking for my phone--which I lost during extenuating circumstances that anyone would excuse--and then leaving. We can even relock the door behind us.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Come on, please? I need that phone. Genuinely. If I can’t retrieve it, I may well find myself in some deep trouble, and then no one will be able to care for my poor, ailing sister.”

Carrot stared at him, then her mouth opened in a little ‘o.’ “Are you trying to manipulate me?”

“Only with the truth,” he said.

She pouted very hard, in a way that he hadn’t seen the like since... well, since Summer was about ten years younger than this girl was. “What’s the tool?” she asked. “But I’m not going in there, not unless it’s an emergency.”

He felt his lips twitch, but managed to keep his composure as he raised a small device. It was, to all appearances, a rock, which... it was. It was about as long as his hand was wide and entirely smooth, with a mostly rectangular profile. Tossed on the ground, and it would look like any other piece of detritus. That was, if one didn’t notice the tiny runes scratched along the sides in a neat script. 

“This is a tool made by the Ordo Sustenere. It’s designed to unlock doors. It’s not nearly as fast of effective as a door-unlocking spell, and its energy costs are far, far higher, but it is still useful. As long as you have the energy, and the time, almost no door will stop you.”

Carrot’s eyes were shining as she looked at the little device. “Cool! How does it work?”

“No idea,” he replied honestly. At her disappointed and confused look, he clarified. “It’s not something new. The Ordo Sustenere has been around for centuries, they’ve been making this and similar for almost as long, so this is the result of decades of improvements.”

“Oh, okay,” Carrot said. “How do you use it, then?”

He glanced at the rock-like device, then pressed the business end on the door. “Press a thumb or finger over this little marker here, then channel magic through it. The cleaner the magic the better. Start with just a trickle, then slowly, slowly, work your way up.”

He wasn’t sure if she’d be able to even feed the device enough, but at the moment, his circuits were fried and a few hours and some cereal was hardly enough to replenish his magical energy.

“Okay, I can do that,” Carrot said. “Though if we get caught by the police, I’m tossing you under the bus. I know a few of the cops around here. I’m sure they’d believe me if I said that you were a bad influence.”

“Ah, you you can be manipulative,” Silas said.

Carrot just stared at him. “Huh? But it’s true?”

“Nevermind, just... use the magic maintenance key,” he said.

Carrot pinched the tip of her tongue between her lips and focused hard. Silas, for a moment, wondered if she’d be able to manage it at all. Knowing a few little magic tricks and maybe the wild mage equivalent of a cantrip or two was neat, but it wasn’t the same as having years of experience using magical devices.

Every one of the higher-education level doors at the academy he went to had a magical lock on it that required a magic user to push their magic through to open it. It was a quick way to teach a young mage to use simple magic devices without having to think on it too hard, lest they find themselves staring at a washroom door, unable to get in.

Silas was just about to reach out to help Carrot when there was a lout whump and he felt a blast of wind shoot past him followed a split second later by a loud crash of metal on metal.

The door was opened... at least until it started to slowly swing back closed, only held in place by one of its three hinges.

“Ah!” Carrot said. “Ah! Ah... I’m going to jail forever.”

“What... um, did you do?’ Silas asked.

Carrot hissed, then started to toss the device up and down before she flicked it to the side onto a snowbank. Silas glanced over and saw the rock hissing as it sank into the snow that it was quickly melting through.

“I went slow!” Carrot said.

“Uh-huh,” he replied.

Dammit, he really didn’t have much time to waste now, did he. That kind of reaction... well, he could think of a few reasons why it might happen, but none of them bode well, and also none of them were things he could do anything about right then and there. He really needed his phone.

“Stay here. We’ll... figure out what to do about the door later.” Way later. Possibly even never. “Just stay here.”

He slipped into the warehouse, moving with a bit more alacrity than if someone hadn’t just blown the door (almost) off its hinges. Dammit, how had that happened? The spell in the unlocker shouldn’t have had any force component to it. Had she cast something else? By accident? 

Visualization was an important part of casting, but the device was supposed to guide the magic through the right forms. It was basically foolproof... unless it was only proof against most sorts of fools?

He squinted as he tried to see around the warehouse. Someone had left some of the lights on, so there was more light than the last time he’d been here, but that didn’t mean that it was well illuminated in there. The wall shelving units didn’t help much, he supposed.

He saw the spot where he’d fallen. The forklift had been moved. He suppressed a shiver. That had been the closest call in his life. Too close, even. He should have been more prepared. Could have been and should have been, because he was a wizard. That’s how they won. 

Silas arrived in the spot, then glanced around. Where was it? If he still had a lick of magic in him, he might have been able to sense it, the device wasn’t like his wizard’s hat, which was cued and tied into his magic and soul, but it was still somewhat magical, enough to sense. 

“Um, mister Silas?” Carrot said from the entrance.

“Is it the police?” he asked.

“No?”

“Then give me five minutes,” he replied. It might have come off as a little waspish, but... well, he ached all over and was in a bit of a mood. 

Grunting, he knelt down, annoyed on top of all the rest, that his pantlegs would get dirty. He didn’t even have the juice for a prestidigitation or a smidge of cleaning magic at the moment. 

Bowing down until his face was nearly flush with the floor, he looked under the nearest shelf. There! Grinning, he walked forwards on all fours, then reached under the shelf.

“Mister Silas!” Carrot said, a bit more urgent.

He sighed, stood up more--maybe he could find a stick?--and turned to glare. “What?” 

“I feel magic,” Carrot said simply.

He stared. That was... possible. The phone’s magic would be very faint, but if he could sense it, so could others. “It’s just the phone.”

“Are you use?” 

“Yes,” he snapped, then he leaned back down. 

When he next looked under the shelf, the phone was there, and so was something else. Two beady little eyes, a long, snouted face, all black so dark that it actually stood out of the shadows beneath the shelf. “What the,” he said. 

Then the thing hissed at him before it darted forward and snapped the phone up.

“Hey!” he shouted.

“What?” Carrot asked, but he was a lot more focused on the little thing that spun around and darted out the other side of the shelf. He jumped to his feet, then realized that whatever that was, it wasn’t alone.

A large box came tumbling down from above only to crash on the ground not five feet next to him, sending wooden splinters flying out everywhere. He cursed. Carrot gasped. A daemon landed on the metal shelved above with a clank and then cackled. 

“Puny!” the daemon said.

Part of him immediately checked off the right boxes in his head. Bat-like wings, a long snout, a body covered in brown-black fur., disturbingly intelligent eyes. There was no doubting what that was. Chiraeptera Cogni, a Thinking Bat daemon. Rank IV. One of lesser ‘thinking’ daemons, and a threat that would normally be right about at the upper end of what he could be expected to fight... if he was in full form and prepared for it.

“Carrot, run!” he shouted.

“Um,” Carrot said. “I think they can move faster, Mister Silas,” she said.

They?!

***

Carrot counted three of them. Fuzzy-wuzzy little batlings, about the size of a german shepard, and desperately in need of a good brushing.

She wondered if they liked bananas. She’d seen a .Gif of bats eating bananas once and had wanted to feed one ever since. 

Plus, she found that she had a natural affinity towards bats. They were, in many ways, the dark magical girls of the rodent world.

Taking a deep breath, Carrot did something she very much knew was wrong. She stepped up and into the warehouse. (Last time had also been wrong, but breaking the law to save someone’s life was objectively the right thing to do. Ambulances didn’t have to follow the speed limit, and magical girls couldn't always ask for permission.)

“Mister Bat,” she said, injecting as much warning into her tone as she could. “Its a nice afternoon to meet you. I don’t think I’ve ever met an animal that could talk. Well, except for a parrot that one time.”

“What is this this child doing? You’re too small to even be a morsel!” the bat hissed.

Rude! She was perfect just the way she was, her mom said so! 

“Carrot,” Silas hissed. 

Carrot looked up, trying to make sure her count was right. One one bat was visible, but there were two smaller ones in the room with it. One was circling around the far end of the room to her left, keeping to the shadows, the other was not too far behind the bigger one who was talking.

She got the sense--though her senses weren’t that good, she didn’t think--that the one speaking was the strongest of the three by a fair bit. “What’s your name?” she asked.

The bat thing squinted at her and its ears--which were very big and looked very soft--wiggled. “What’s it matter to you?”

“I think that you ought to know the name of someone who might be a friend,” Carrot said.

“Carrot,” Silas warned. “That’s a Chiraeptera Cogni, they’re dangerous. We need to run. Go, I’ll keep it busy.”

She glanced at him, then dismissed the idea. He might have been trying to hide it, but she could tell that he wasn’t in tip-top. If anyone fought here, it would be her.

“Oh, there won’t be any going,” the bat said. Then it grinned, and Carrot got a bad feeling in her gut. “Unless you mean going to hell!” 

He opened his mouth wide, and in an instant, Carrot found herself plunging forward, as if the entire world had just tilted ninety degrees.

***