Chapter 230: Chapter 221 – A ritual for Frank

Car-destroyer strikes again!

A dozen rusted-out cars were found by their owners in a mall parking lot in Worcester, Massachusetts today. This follows a string of similar occurrences at other malls along I-95. The first reported incident was in New York City less than a week ago, where…

Serenity swept the room, then started pulling the fake apparatus out of the bag. He hadn’t had a chance to look over it, but it seemed like Rissa had exceeded expectations. While they were out shopping, she’d decided that having a fake version of the artifact would really sell the masquerade, so she’d taken care of it.

He knew she’d started with a simple plexiglass sheet (or maybe more than one?), some copper foil tape, and some markers (she’d talked for at least half an hour about how different markers worked on plexiglass). He had no idea how she’d managed to get the plexiglass to turn into a bowl shape - or maybe she’d found some translucent bowls that were about the right size? He wasn’t sure he wanted to ask; sometimes it was better to preserve the mystery.

As he set up the ritual, Frank kept asking questions. Serenity had to be careful about how he answered; he knew that he was like Liam in that he liked talking about magic, but they spoke differently. Liam was completely focused on rituals and where they came from and who had used them. It was information that Serenity didn’t really care about; he cared about what a spell or ritual could do and how to properly perform it to the desired result.

No matter what he cared about, though, he had to pretend to be Liam. He found himself giving a half-lecture on the difference in rituals performed by Sir John Dee and Aleister Crowley he pulled out of Liam’s memory. It was mostly pseudomagical nonsense, but Serenity had the feeling that Liam had given the lecture more than once for it to be so easy to come up with.

If this was the best Earth had for magical research, no wonder Phoebe was fumbling with less-than-half-understood rote spells and Russ was performing a ritual where he didn’t know which parts were magic and which were ceremony. Surely someone out there knew more? Serenity was looking forward to meeting Red.

The part of the “ritual setup” that amused Serenity the most was that they’d managed to hide voice recorders in the “artifact” and Serenity had another he set outside the bag. They were both controlled remotely, so he triggered them to start recording as one of the last steps.

As Serenity finished the material setup for the ritual he was going to perform on Frank, he wrapped up Liam’s lecture. It didn’t seem to have alerted Frank to any inconsistencies, so he must have pulled it off the way Liam would have. “Please get in the circle - no, put the robe on first, you have to be dressed right. Okay yeah, that’ll work. Get under the artifact - it shouldn’t be too heavy, so make sure not to move it.”

“And this will open my eyes to the Greater Mysteries? You’re sure?” Frank sounded a little nervous as he carefully slipped under the fake artifact, trying not to disturb its position. The artifact’s position or even presence didn’t actually matter at all for the ritual Serenity was performing, but it was an easy way to impress Frank with the reality of the fake artifact.

“This ritual worked the last time I did it.” Serenity was even telling the truth, though not the truth Frank thought he was saying. It was difficult to get an enemy to freely consent to any ritual, even (or perhaps especially) something as relatively innocuous as a Circle of Bound Truth, so the restrictions on the ritual meant that even though it was well known, other interrogation methods were generally used. The ritual was commonly used for trade deals and alliances, but even there it had its issues and failures.

There was no restriction against tricking someone, though, so it was the perfect ritual to use on Frank. Serenity didn’t even have to change it much; the changes he was making were simply to allow for the presence of the fake artifact and the candles that Liam had believed were necessary for any ritual. It was one of the simpler rituals; that was, of course, why it was as restrictive as it was. Overcoming resistance was difficult to manage reliably, so rituals that didn’t involve consent needed something else.

Serenity believed that the ritual Liam performed wasn’t actually intended to have people in the circle at all. The ritual actually acted on the mentirk, which not only couldn’t resist but was designed to accept and channel the energy. If it simply called the Void being to come to the circle; that would explain everything that happened.

Serenity wanted to look over the book Liam had used, but hadn’t had time yet. He had been unable to find anywhere in Liam’s memory where it actually called for people to be in the circle; Liam must have misunderstood something.

Serenity pulled his scattered thoughts together. He’d needed to keep Liam’s memories of rituals and of Frank for this purpose, but they seemed to have a bad effect on his concentration. He wondered if there was a way to get rid of them once they’d served their purpose, but that could wait until after he dealt with the other memories that were disturbing his sleep.

“What happened to those two, anyway?” Frank was half-under the fake artifact.

Serenity shrugged. “They left with your guys after the ritual.” Once again, truth if you looked at it the right way; Serenity had taken “Frank’s guys” with him when he left Liam’s house, after all.

“Hmh. Haven’t heard back from those two yet. Should have by now.” Frank seemed a little concerned, but brushed it off, clearly eager to ‘have his eyes opened to the Greater Mysteries’. Serenity hoped he’d never been so interested in something that he’d ignored all the warning signs, but he was certain he had. Probably more than once.

Frank was in position. Serenity lit the candles then started pacing around the circle while chanting and tossing pinches of a dried herb in the air (he was using crushed basil leaves; Rissa always kept basil in the kitchen). He didn’t actually need to do any of it; he was a skilled enough mage to create the ritual’s spellform directly. Since he knew the chant and the rest of it was simple enough, he went ahead and performed the ritual the normal way.

Building one ritual’s spellform while seeming to do another was difficult when he first learned ritual casting, but Serenity had done it more than once in the past (future?). There was no need for that here, though; Frank wouldn’t know the difference.

You are reading story After the End: Serenity at novel35.com

The ritual finished without fanfare; it simply clicked into place the way it was supposed to. It did two things: Frank would be unable to leave or otherwise affect the circle, and he’d want to answer any questions Serenity gave him truthfully. It was difficult to not answer or work around with equivocations, but it was considered impossible to actually lie while under the effect of the ritual. Serenity wasn’t certain if that was entirely true, but it was certainly true for Frank.

“You can sit up now. Where did you meet Liam?” Serenity dug into the bag of ritual supplies for the list of questions he wanted to ask; he planned to be here for several hours, questioning Frank.

“In elementary school, you know that - wait, you’re not Liam?” Frank pulled himself out from under the fake artifact, then reached under his jacket for a pistol, which he pointed at Serenity. “What did you do with Liam?”

“You care about him?” Serenity wasn’t worried about the gun. It wouldn’t be able to shoot through the circle any more than Frank could walk through it. It was definitely possible to overload a ritual barrier, but a single gunshot wouldn’t do it, at least not from a pistol. Serenity could reinforce it as it was damaged if the gun did more than he thought it would.

“Of course I do! He’s the only real friend I have, and he’s willing to do anything I ask him to. Now, where’s Liam? Answer or I will shoot you.”

Serenity’s phone vibrated at that moment. It was Rissa, so he plugged in the wired headset, put it on, and answered. “All good?”

“Yeah, just one and he’s sleeping now. We’re not having any luck finding what we’re looking for, though. Are you available to help?” Rissa was trying to avoid anything that might make it obvious what they were up to if someone could somehow overhear the conversation.

“No, I’m afraid not. I’m still in the middle of a conversation. I’ll make it as fast as I can, but I’m sure you’ll finish before I do.” Serenity hung up. It was good to hear that the other half of the mission was also going well, even if they hadn’t found the missing artifacts yet.

As Serenity put the phone and headset back in the hidden pocket, Frank threatened him again. “Tell me where Liam is or I’ll shoot you.”

Serenity decided to go ahead and answer, even though he didn’t need to. It might help or it might not, but it was unlikely to hurt. “I am Liam. Rituals don’t always have the effect you expect when you don’t know what it is, you know. Now, why were you stealing magical artifacts?”

Frank fired at Serenity. The bullet hit the barrier at the edge of the ritual circle and squashed itself into a strange mushroom shape before falling to the floor. Serenity watched with surprise; he’d more than half expected it to ricochet, but instead all of the momentum was absorbed by the barrier.

Frank stared at his gun, then at the distorted metal as it clanged against the concrete floor.

“They sell well. They sell really well right now if you know the right people, and I do. There’s a new buyer who’s paying top dollar in pure gold to anyone who can get their hands on artifacts. They don’t even have to be complete and you don’t have to prove they're magical, but if you can include the ritual or whatever their history is, it’s worth even more. This thing,” Frank waved at the fake artifact next to him, “without the ritual, it’s worth about a hundred thousand, but with a working ritual I should clear a couple mil. I won’t even have to do this for long and I’ll have more gold than Fort Knox!”

That seemed unlikely; Serenity wasn’t sure how much was in Fort Knox, but anyone giving up that much gold either didn’t value it or didn’t actually plan to let go of it. On top of that, one person coming into that much gold would severely distort the gold market and make the value plummet if he tried to liquefy it.

Serenity had the sinking suspicion that with that kind of money floating around, real or not, that Frank was very unlikely to be the only person looking for a huge payday. If Rissa’s collection was as (relatively) large as he suspected, they needed a safer place to keep it than the spare bedroom immediately. Frank had found her by - he could confirm that.

“How did you find that artifact?”

“Liam found that book at a rare books dealer, one he frequented. I’ve bought out a bunch of their stock in case more of it has rituals I can get loads of money for. He told me about a few things in it, but the stained glass plate thing is the first one I’ve been able to actually find. It took months of searching before I found it mentioned in an estate sale, and by then it was already long sold. I don’t know why anyone would buy it as anything but a magical artifact, but Lessi found it still in the original packaging. He had George bring it here with everything else that was magical in the house. It’s the biggest haul yet!”

Frank sounded absolutely thrilled about the theft from Rissa’s.