Chapter 5: Chapter 5 – Things Are Going Smoothly!

Emily gasped for air as she hauled Matthew up the hill. Despite being a generally quite skinny boy, he sure did weigh a lot.

And she wasn't carrying just him, but also a bag chock full of various ritual materials. Ritual materials that had been surprisingly easy to buy with the money she stole from Matthew's wallet.

'Money is so much more convenient now; I'm glad ordinary folks finally got over their obsession with bartering.' Emily remembered like it was yesterday how she had been forced to buy an entire goat's worth of Frogwort when she only needed a fistful of the stuff. Those were dark days, literally.

Another thing she liked about the modern world was that she could flick a switch, and Matthew's house would light up. Now, there was definitely something to be said about the atmosphere candles created, but the lamp in Matthew's living room sure was convenient and it didn't smell, which helped.

She had spent the majority of the previous night recovering from using magic without clearing her anima. After she eventually had the strength to move, she had grabbed a notebook from Matthew's bedroom, and, ignoring the embarrassing diary entries, she started to write out as many rituals as she could from memory.

Even though Emily knew most of the common rituals off by heart, she liked to write them down just to be safe. She could only imagine how embarrassing it would be to fumble your words in front of a local god and end up dead. No, Emily was better than that.

She first wrote down her original Ritual, a long cryptic spell that used crow's blood to create her familiar. But Emily didn't think she could catch a crow right now. Not without her spells and no bow handy. After checking all over Matthew's house just to be sure, she was shocked to find that he didn't own a single weapon, and yet also strangely happy.

'If he doesn't own a weapon, that means there is no need for them in modern society...' She sighed, her eyes glittering, 'Beautiful...'

His house was big and, most importantly, clean. There were so many amenities that she felt spoiled for choice. 'He has running water, for god's sake! Only the most accomplished mages could ever figure that out to this extent!' She was having a hard time believing that this wasn't magic.

After losing her mind over the flushing toilet and fridge that kept food from going bad, Emily helped herself to everything she could find in the kitchen while writing down more rituals.

Blood of the bat, a simple one with slightly sinister after-effects. In the past, Emily had known of a witch that used this ritual and ended up thirsting for blood. 'Besides the fact I don't want to drink blood, preying on people is like holding up a big sign that says: Church, Please Kill Me!'

Since she didn't know the church's stance on witches or how they were perceived in modern society, Emily wanted to avoid the rituals that would have obvious body defects.

That ruled out a cat since she didn't want a tail anytime soon. Every witch she had known with that familiar never stopped complaining about how hard it was to sit down.

Frog was a no-go. Emily didn't want bug eyes, no matter how high she would be able to jump.

This was another aspect of the familiar that she should have mentioned to Matthew. Witches have two states of being. Whole and separate.

Day to day, a witch separates their anima from their body, and it accompanies them in the form of a familiar. Acting as a guardian, the familiar wards of physical attacks and, in general, helps the witch in daily activities.

Whenever a witch needs to use magic, they fuse with their anima, taking on their familiar's characteristics and gaining physical strength and a closer connection to their chosen familiar.

This closer connection makes magic far easier to cast but also strains an inexperienced witch's mind.

For a while, Emily had thought about using a wild boar. Tusks could be kind of cute if they weren't too big. But as she looked down at the city from the top of the hill, she was glad she didn't make that decision.

'Where has all the nature gone?'

When she lived here, when she was born here, it had been fields as far as the eye could see. And deep in the valley, where Belfast now resided, was a river basin with sandy beaches and clusters of overgrown trees.

Nature was gone, and she was standing on its last frontier, a solitary hill miles from the city. Everything between her and Belfast had urbanised into a sprawling mess of unplanned houses that had sprung up like mushrooms under a damp log.

Emily couldn't imagine a boar roaming those streets. She could hardly imagine any animals, actually.

But that didn't mean they weren't there.

She had left at dawn when barely a single person walked the streets, stopping in a shop before carrying Matthew through the fields behind his house up towards the Devil’s Rise.

The grass were slick with dew condensed from the previous night's fog, glittering in the morning sun. As the sun rose over the hill, creeping up to begin the day anew, Emily realised this was the first sunRise she had seen in four hundred years.

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It was a sobering thought, and she dumped Matthew on the grass for a moment, soaking in the rays.

"Nothing is the same..." She muttered, clenching her fist tightly.

For now, she had a plan. Get back her powers and prove to Matthew she was who she said she was. After that... Well, there was no after.

Emily knew nothing of this world, and how it worked, it was an alien place, almost another planet.

'I suppose I could join a coven, if those still exist. Or perhaps I could finally try my hand at becoming a Lay Lord.' She shook her head.

"No..." Looking down at the sprawling city, Emily saw endless possibilities. There was so much that had changed, so much for her to learn and experience.

'I'm going to take it easy,' She decided, reaching down and grabbing Matthew by the arms.

With a grunt, she started hauling him up the hill again, his feet dragging limply on the grass behind them.

On her way up the hill, Emily had seen a few animals that might do. A couple of sheep and a herd of cows were the standouts, but she had also seen a rabbit that wouldn't be too bad.

If she didn't already know what familiar she wanted, Emily might have settled for the rabbit, but this time, she was aiming higher.

She finally arrived at the top of the hill and saw it. The Devil’s Rise was a perfect circle of earth raised two metres above ground level. Surrounding it was a ring of gnarled trees that never grew leaves, even in the summer. It was about twenty metres in diameter and looked strange in the morning sun.

While every nearby piece of the ground had dew and glittered in the burgeoning sunlight, the grass that grew on the Rise did not. It was a darker, more sinister green and tinged red at the edges.

When she saw it come into view, Emily sighed. Even as a witch, she didn't like coming here.

"What was the old legend?" She muttered, "Oh yes, bow once to the holy spirit and twice to the witch that killed him,"

Although it was only a superstition, witches dealt almost strictly with that sort of thing. Emily didn't want to tempt fate, so she did exactly that, bowing three times in total with reverence to the ring of trees.

'If she really was buried in there...' Emily took a deep breath, 'I hope this doesn't wake her up,'

Not wanting to think about what would happen to her if the witch woke up, Emily busied herself setting up a trap. A wide array of herbs were ground onto some chicken from Matthew's fridge and set inside a bowl she had grabbed from his kitchen. Some of the herbs, when combined in the proper way, were irresistible to her desired familiar. Others were poisonous.

She didn't stop there, grabbing the bag of rock salt and a shaker full of rosemary. With one in either hand, she ran into the centre of the Devil’s Rise, drawing a shaky pentagram on the ground with rock salt and then going over it with rosemary. On each corner of the pentagram, she placed a colourful birthday candle. When she was finished, she stood proudly over the completed pentagram with her arms crossed and a goofy smile on her face.

Although it lacked a certain sinister ambience, it should work fine.

Just as she finished, Emily heard the sharp snap of a breaking twig and grinned.

'Looks like the fox-nip worked.'

As she skipped out of the Devil’s Rise and towards the fox that had its head buried in the bowl, she couldn't help smiling.

"Everything is going so smoothly!" She almost felt like whistling a tune.

---

The same could not be said for Jason. Who, as this was happening, was trying his best to ignore the increasingly loud knocks on his front door.

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