Sell you a Bridge chapter 63

The Clock Tower July 27th 2010 11:00 AM EDT

I  skipped school the next day. I didn't really feel like going through  the spanish inquisition that I suspected every student would be now that  the teachers knew about the Labyrinth. Plus my brain was still buzzing  from the night before. Making my smokeshow girlfriend have her first  orgasm without even getting her pants off was definitely nice, but the  cuddling after had been just as amazing.

I'd  been scared we'd gone too fast and she might have pulled away but she  was so content and cuddly after she came that I couldn't help but leave  with a smile.The main reason though was that I felt a pressing need to  prepare my friends as best as possible for what was coming, and in the  spirit of that preparation it was time to do something I'd been dragging  my feet on for far too long. It was time to give Artemis a superpower.

I  had her stay back too, though we made Reggie go because he already had a  power and we needed someone to let us know what crazy nonsense the  school would get up to. Despite my intentions to do so however, when  Artemis sniffed out where I'd been last night she derailed the  conversation and I ended up telling her about my evening with Zee. She  whistled when she heard what happened "Damn Morgan, sounds like you had a  good night. Seriously that girl is WAY too hot for you, you lucked out.  Is she stacked? I always kind of got the weird impression she was  sporting a pair of huge knockers under those button up shirts."

I  rolled my eyes, but the tell tale smirk of pride on my face shone  through. "I know she's too hot for me. And yes, they're D's though if  you tell her I told you that I'll deny it tooth and nail. Can we please  get back on track though? I just told you I'll be giving you  superpowers. No questions? Comments? This is a one time deal." I was at  sixty points with five incoming, so she could always wait for something  better. I wasn't going to push her into taking some shitty power when I  couldn't give her more.

She  shook her head "No. You're right things are getting nuts around town.  It doesn't make sense for me to wait until your powers can give me some  uber strong ability if I'm already dead before you get the points. I  know that you can't afford to give me anything too crazy, but what are  my options?" She was practically vibrating with excitement but I could  see her taking control over herself and forcing her breathing to even  out. She didn't want to rush me, no matter how excited she happened to  be at the idea of being a meta.

I  pulled up a list of emails I'd bookmarked for her. "There's a few  things. My power's usually fall into the categories of skills,  abilities, or items. Items are pretty useless here since they can be  lost, and you have skills. Abilities are usually pricey, but I've found  that looking for ones with an obvious downside usually cuts the price  substantially. For instance, I have one for a vial of real vampire blood  that will let you become a creature of the night. Sunlight and cross  weaknesses apply though."

Her  eyebrow went up and I shrugged. "Like I said, downsides bring the price  down. I'd avoid it though, those abilities have the potential to effect  wide scale change which usually makes them pricey, if that one is only  sixty despite letting you turn people into vampires on a whim the  downsides must be awful. Same with the werewolf spit vial I found. There  are a few gene treatments that can give you alien abilities, but the  powerful ones are too expensive to afford and the leftovers seem to be  useless fictional aliens. You can be a Vulcan for pretty cheap, but  honestly we can do better."

Her  eyes were wide now. "Ok, well honestly I'd prefer to avoid becoming a  monster if possible. As for an alien, I think probably staying human  would be better for me. Do you have anything less...goth? Or I guess  transforming would be fine if it's into something cool. Do you have  any,  like elf transformations? That would really go with my archery  thing, plus it might make me even hotter, and I'm curious to see what  that would be like." I rolled my eyes and opened up my phone flipping  through all my emails.

The  monster transformation stuff was mainly from goth forums and weird  underground vampire cult websites. Really weird fringe groups. I hadn't  found any faerie dust or anything but I though I had seen. Aha. An email  from a new age magic library offering me a transformation ritual. "You  could become a 'Child of the forest' which seems to be an elf, for fifty  points. The actual ritual is supplied but apparently we have to power  it ourselves and we need to supply 'mystical artifacts of great  potency'. " I scrolled through the email, checking on the details. There  was a surprising amount of context for how it worked.

I  was assuming the reason it was so damn cheap was because you needed to  supply your own mats. Apparently the type of elf you became had to do  with the mystical significance of the artifacts used. Normally that  might be tough since I could tell I couldn't use items from my power to  create the change. This was oddly intricate for a scam. I went to the  website and made a sound of understanding. Apparently the place actually  sold all "Mystical artifacts" needed. They charged obscene amounts for  them and the whole thing seemed like a way to strip idiots of all their  money.

Regardless  it seemed perfect for us at the moment due to the Labyrinth dropping  tons of gear. I passed the phone to Artemis, who looked intrigued. "This  seems pretty cool. Can we power the ritual?" I nodded confidently, that  would be far from a problem. She frowned a bit but nodded after a  second of thought. "Ok. Let's go with that one. Granted we might need to  source a whole bunch of gear from the dungeon before we can do it but  it'll just make me stronger in the long run." She seemed excited by the  very idea so I smiled and pressed the order now button. The ritual cost  five hundred dollars and I felt it deduct from my bank account.

A  knock rang out on the door. Artemis and I just looked at each other.  She'd never seen my power at work before. I just smiled and gestured for  her to go ahead and she bolted from the chair towards the door. I  laughed at the enthusiasm as she flung the door to the hallway of the  tower open to show...a box. Not the usual cardboard box, but an ancient  looking white oak casket with intricate gold inlay. The symbols etched  into it and filled with gold leaf were complex and whirling, reminding  me a bit of elvish from lord of the rings.

Artemis  picked up the casket and kicked the door shut, bolting back over to  take the lid off so we could see what was inside. She unlatched the lid  and brought out several items. A small case of chalk and various inks, a  small book that appeared to be directions. A scroll of soft but ancient  vellum, exactly thirteen candles, five silver bowls a gleaming silver  dagger, a dozen stones of various sizes and colors, and five spikes of  what looked like ancient bone with symbols carved all over them.The bone  was yellowed with time but still looked strong, which was a bit  impressive.

I glanced at Artemis  with a raised eyebrow and she passed me the book to flip through while  she took out everything else. The ritual kit, according to the email  only worked a single time, but the book explained why. Apparently most  of the focii would be destroyed during the channeling of the power. I  was fascinated by the instructions, written in flowing spiderlike  cursive. I flipped through the book, speed reading and perfect recall  making finishing the whole thing easy, and once it was done I put it  back.

The  complexity of my power shocked me sometimes. This entire ritual had been  constructed and brought into being for this exact purpose. I knew for a  fact the actual ritual would be nothing like this if it wasn't a  complete load of bullshit in the first place. The booklet outlined all  the necessary preparations, the circumstances, the time and place that  the ritual needed to be performed. The only thing missing was the  details of the magic artifacts because they were specific to the  individual ritual itself.

The  vagueness of the email had actually played out in our favor this time.  Because they didn't want to shoot themselves in the foot with their  bullshit artifact sales they made it customizable, which meant the  artifacts we provided would literally create a new breed of elf. The  name of the elven race would be burned onto the vellum contract along  with details of the race in question. I was blown away. The components  needed must have massively lowered the cost because something like this  should have cost thousands of points.

I  mentally scanned through the book before I realized why and grimaced. I  passed Artemis the book, open to the page I'd found the catch. Artemis  would live for centuries if not millennia, and conceiving a kid would be  almost impossible. Elves apparently had stupidly low fertility rates,  and the chances of her ever having a child were insanely low. She bit  her lip and stared down at the text, seeming...almost confused. I  suspected this wasn't something Artemis had ever considered having to  think about at fifteen.

Finally  she shrugged "Oh well. I admit it's not ideal but I wasn't planning to  have kids anytime soon anyway. Who knows maybe we can find some other  magic to make it possible later. This thing seems pretty amazing either  way. You have any clue what it'll actually do for me? Seems a bit  vague." She had obviously decided not to talk about the negatives and I  respected that, I just shrugged and pulled up the website, trying to get  some clues to what would actually happen based on their ridiculous face  ritual artifacts.

Sadly  all of it was useless. The ritual I had was pretty much incomparable to  the original I would bet, and the details seemed to have been  fabricated from thin air. I looked up at my best friend with a sigh  "Nope. I can hazard a vague guess based on the magical properties but  who knows whether the whole object effects the build or whether its just  the magic. The book is surprisingly mum on all the ins and outs of the  magic itself, just ridiculously detailed instructions on how to execute  the actual ceremony." I leaned forward and snagged the vellum, sliding  off the ribbon and unrolling it slowly. "What about this, any details  here?"

I  looked down at it and my jaw dropped. Artemis waited expectantly but  eventually realized I wasn't talking and pulled it toward her to look.  Finally she glanced down at it and burst out laughing. I rolled my eyes  and pulled the vellum back over to me to scan it again. A name, a race,  individual indicators for different statistics, unique characteristic  traits at the bottom and a list of skills and abilities. I closed my  eyes and sighed at my power. I'd just been thinking of how amazing it  was that my ability had created all this from scratch, but as I stared  down at the obvious and still blank character sheet for a fucking game  character I had to roll my eyes. My power definitely had a sense of  humor.