[Omen of the Witchblade] Chapter 126 - The Rook

Rholont shut his eyes for a moment, then pulled a card with an elaborately designed backing out of thin air. He handed it to Mel.

As soon as Mel grabbed it, she realized that Rholont wasn’t letting go. She wasn’t going to tug ineffectually on it.

“I would normally say, ‘good luck’ here,” Rholont said pensively. “However, in this case, I believe it is your enemies that need all the luck they can get. Though our time was longer than I would have wished it, I cannot say I did not enjoy myself in a way I thought I was elevated beyond. For that, thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Mel grinned. She took the card from Rholont and extended her own hand. Surprisingly, he shook it. “It’s so nice to meet you. Let’s never meet again.”

Rholont shook her hand gently. “On that, we are of one mind. Fare you well, Melody Harper.”

With a flash of light and a crackle of power, Mel was standing in the living room with Komachi in one arm and a card of unimaginable power in her fingers.

“Figured somebody else would’ve reacted like me,” Komachi said with uncharacteristic clarity and focus. “Machi has danced in decadence across the cosmos and dis never gets old. Wait, somebody did! They just hidin’ it.”

The flow of conversation continued as if it had never stopped. Gwen, who had been frozen mid-motion swinging a scarlet pie at an indifferent Miranda, finally landed it in the vampyr’s face. It was peak Gwen to be doing something aggressive while blushing from embarrassment.

Retribution was swift and merciless. Miranda, her face still dripping with red jelly from the pie, twisted around and lifted Gwen up by securing a hold on her shoulder and her crotch. She rose to her nearly seven-foot height and spun Gwen around and around.

Compared to Miranda, Gwen almost looked small.

Everybody stopped to watch the spectacle as Miranda launched the oversized, howling werewolf across the penthouse. Midway through the air, Miranda turned into a cloud of bats and rushed after Gwen. The dark cloud dripped red filling from dozens of different bat mouths, each smeared with the remnants of pie.

Huh, so that’s how that works, Mel thought with interest.

After the display, Heath started in surprise, noticing that Mel’s chair was empty and she was standing several yards from the table. “Holy smokes, Mel! Did you get your agility starred?”

“Komachi?” Sylvie asked, looking at where her pobul had been just a second ago.

All eyes at the table fell on Mel and Komachi.

Mel held up the card. It glowed with power visible to the naked eye. Waves of mana rolled off of it in coruscating sheets. The sort of thing that any Magi would be deeply attuned to. They could feel it like a storm front approaching.

Nathan stared. “Is that an ultra-rare MTG card?”

Charlie rose unsteadily, waving away Camilla’s concern. She sauntered over to the card, studying it. “You used the voucher?”

Mel nodded.

“The [Golden Voucher]?” Thomas asked. “I didn’t see you use it.”

“Funny story about that,” Mel said. She stepped up to the table and regaled them with the tale of meeting Rholont.

From time to time, Komachi chimed in. “Ehehe, I pooted on him.”

“Why am I poisoned with [Temporal Stench]? It’s so bad!” Gwen cried in dismay from across the penthouse while running away from the cloud of bats and accidentally demolishing some furniture in her path. “Miranda, stop! I don’t know if I’ll seriously injure you if I punch a bat!”

Aspect Skill: [Frostbringer]

The bats dove in as one, swarming Gwen. The thick snow and ice growing across Gwen froze the bats to her skin, forming a patchy cocoon of mutually assured destruction. They crashed to the ground.

Mel gently rolled Komachi into Sylvie’s waiting arms, who chided her for breaking the spacetime continuum with her farts again.

Shrubley waddled up to Gwen and held out a small burning berry to her mouth.

Aspect Skill: [Counteract]

“There you go,” he said pleasantly. “All better.”

“Thank you so much, Shrubley.”

Mel looked at each of them in turn. “This Rook.” She held up the card. “Is our new home. You are all free to stay here as long as you want, but this is a place that’s all ours.”

Charlie cursed quietly enough that most couldn’t hear her. “My own plot? So much for the upper hand.”

“Yeah, don’t see how you can beat this.” Mel grinned smugly.

Charlie stared down into Mel’s eyes with such transfixing intensity that it wiped the grin off Mel’s face. “Since when did Mel Harper get so brilliant?” Before Mel knew it, Charlie entwined her fingers with Mel’s. “Maybe I was wrong to turn you down last night…”

Nathan looked at Charlie. “Oh, sure, you’ll hit on the High Copper girl who won the Convocation over tens of thousands of other people, but not the hunky Mundane guy who died and only just got revived.”

Charlie glanced at him. “Yeah, dude. Congrats, you figured it out.”

Maddie gasped. “Nathan!”

Nodding, Nathan chuckled at Charlie’s response, showing he clearly wasn’t serious. He threw a wink at Mel. “Nice pull, Mel. She’s hot.”

“That’s my aunt,” Hal grumbled.

Nathan raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, hot is hot.”

That even got a grimace from Sylvie.

Mel’s thoughts screeched to a halt. Her panicked reaction was that of utmost maturity and keen tact.

Mel shoved Charlie away. She stumbled back into Adam’s arms, who frowned at Mel with a hateful, smoldering fire in his eyes.

“Yeah, fuck you too, pal,” Mel whispered so only Charlie and Adam could hear.

The shocked expression on his face was more than worth it.

Fortunately, nobody seemed to think this behavior was too odd. Even the quasi-fight between Gwen and Miranda didn’t raise any eyebrows.

That was just how the Magi were. Small scuffles were common.

Sabrina raised her hand. “I…know that my opinion doesn’t matter quite as much, but how do we know it’s safe?”

Everybody looked at her as if the thought hadn’t crossed their heads. Which, being Magi, it hadn’t.

All of a sudden, the dining room was filled with half a dozen different explanations about magical buildings and how they’re safer than anything you could build by hand.

Every person there except for the normies had seen the majesty of Brookmoors Academy. They understood the value and rarity of completely magical buildings.

And most of them were trying to explain that to Sabrina and the others.

“Suffice to say,” Mel said, lifting her voice to cut through the others, “that this is a golden opportunity. Pun intended. We can stay here, giving the Starling Tower–who won’t break neutrality to help us train or improve–all the free publicity they can stomach. Or…we can go our own way.”

Mel gestured out to the windows. “We can set up shop right next door if we want. What’re they going to do about it?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Charlie said with the beginnings of a devious grin. “At least, no more than scheme.”

“Exactly!” Mel pointed at her. “We can go wherever we want. Set up a tavern, a potion shop, a restaurant, anything we can imagine. If we want to change what that is, we don’t need a permit. It’s a function of the Rook to change its shape and design to suit us.”

Charlie glanced at Mel, then at the others. She stepped a little further from Adam. “There is one small problem.”

Mel frowned at her, but didn’t stop her. She was right, after all. Though how Charlie knew about the soul problem was another question entirely.

“The Rook is without a soul. It needs something more than we have to offer in order to bring it fully to life. We will need to find something that can Awaken the Rook before it’ll be able to move over a long distance or advance in any way.”

“Wait, isn’t this a building?” Heath asked in confusion. “Why does a building need a soul?”

“What do you think our Brookmoors Academy was?” Charlie remarked.

“There’s no way,” Thomas put in. “It had to be something far more complex than that.”

“Or that’s how it started,” she countered. “Then it grew over the ages.”

“That’s a fair point,” he conceded.

That started another debate about the origin of Brookmoors. All eyes turned to Almace and Aegis. As Archivists, that was their domain. They were the guardians of Brookmoors and knew more about the magical place than even the most well-read Magi.

Aegis shifted uncomfortably. “It…is possible Brookmoors started out as a Rook. It is not a word I have heard before.” He looked at Almace, who shook his head. “We were only Third Class Archivists. That information would only be possible for Fifth Class or above.”

Ashera laced her fingers and rested her pale chin on using them like a hammock. A move Mel had seen Hal perform countless times when he was deep in thought.

It brought a fond smile to Mel’s lips.

“Is there enough room for all of us?” Ashera asked. “There are…many of us. Without the largesse of the Starling Towers, we would need to work.”

“Something we were planning on doing already,” Mel pointed out. “We were going to check on the contracts for the Order today.”

Shrubley drummed his woody fingers on the table. “This is fun! It’ll be like making a new friend. I am an Awakened monster too.”

Having returned, Miranda raised a brow.

“I am on board,” Ashera said. “The sooner we move, the more we can leverage our newfound fame for our own benefit. The longer we wait, the more others benefit from us. Why should they? It hardly seems a fair exchange for a few fancy rooms and free food.”

“Nothing is ever free,” Charlie agreed. “Whoever wants Champions and Challengers in their company benefits. The sooner we do this, the better. Though I am not so fond that both milestones have been offered by Mel. It’s better to build with many hands.”

Jacob and Hal fell to the ground, laughing, clearly having sparred to a draw. They had no idea what the others were talking about.

Camilla glanced at Jacob tenderly, then turned her red-and-green gaze on Mel. “Is that what we’re doing? Voting? I vote we go. Our deeds should benefit us and us alone. We are an Order now, are we not? What reason do we have to stay if we have a home of our own? I will open my purse if food is an issue. It must be a pittance compared to valuable scrolls and the loot we will get.”

Nice heterochromia you’ve got there, Mel thought. As if the woman didn’t look main character worthy enough with her flawless pale skin and raven black hair.

Gwen crossed her arms, looking away to the floor-to-ceiling windows. “This is how curses start. If the soul you put in there isn’t what you think it is. Or there’s a betrayal.”

“Well, hold on now,” Mel said. “It’s less about putting any old soul you find on the side of the road in there, and more about Awakening the building. Giving it a soul in the abstract sense and less the literal. Unless you know somebody who is a building or wants to be a building.”

Shrubley sat up. “Cluckley!”

Miranda covered her face with her palm.

“Pyuu!” Smudge cried excitedly.

Gwen looked over with great surprise and even hope.

Cal, looking rather small in his chair, looked around the table. He cleared his throat as the others talked, but his voice was so low nobody heard him.

“Cal has something to say,” Shrubley said loud enough to be heard. “Go on, Cal.”

Clutching his small staff, the skeleton glanced around with blue necromantic fires burning in his eyes. “Cluckley is alive and well back on Almora,” he said. “I don’t think we could use Cluckley…not unless we want to–”

Shrubley shook his bushy body. “I did not mean Cluckley directly,” the bush explained.

That seemed to confuse even more people.

Then Cal gasped, finally catching on. “You don’t mean–”

“Yes!” Shrubley said, standing on his chair and pointing his finger into the air. “It is time for…SON OF CLUCKLEY!”

“Oh my god,” Miranda groaned into her hand.

“It is the perfect opportunity!” Shrubley cried. “Son of Cluckley would love to move into an empty vessel. Usually, it takes many years of growth for such a creature to come to maturity. We can speed that up! Two Cluckleys!” His enthusiasm wilted. “I almost forgot. Son of Cluckley is just an egg. Without Cluckley to sit on the egg and bring forth their soul, we have no idea when Son of Cluckley will arrive. If ever!”

“Fenris and I can handle that, I think,” Charlie said. Then she appeared to realize how that sounded. A witch raising an egg with a fire familiar.

The oppa opened one eye and glared at her as if he wanted to be left out of it.

Camilla dropped a hand to Fenris, who nuzzled against her palm. “Fenris is also the Grave Oppa. He can help to ferry a willing soul that is between life and death. I think this ‘Son of Cluckley’ would qualify. Don’t you think, Fenris?”

The oppa grumbled.

Gwen’s eyes widened, then she grabbed Mel’s sleeve. “Please, please, don’t let him name anything. I’m begging you!”

“How bad could it be?” Mel asked innocently. She didn’t know. She couldn’t know the depths of Shrubley’s naming depravity.

“I’m sorry, Miranda, I tried!” Gwen cried.

“You didn’t try enough!” Miranda roared, then got up and throttled Gwen. Anybody else probably would have been crushed, but that was one advantage of being High Copper.

Mel almost moved to intervene, but this seemed to be something of a habit between them.

Whatever, I’m not kink shaming.

Despite the arguing, they got ready to depart and set up the Rook with Son of Cluckley’s willing soul.

The planning took most of the Magi’s attention, leaving Sabrina and her group to go out with Mel and Charlie to find a suitable location to summon the Rook.