Forbidden Spell – Part 04
We crawled out of the cave by the riverbank and headed for Fomicaum’s second-hand clothes store in the darkness of the night.
We seemed to have been swept quite far downstream. When we checked our current location, Fomicaum was just around the corner. Even avoiding the highway and walking through an animal path, we arrived at our destination while the night was still young.
Since there was a possibility of us being wanted after that incident in the square, it was impossible to just march in to Fomicaum in broad daylight. In other words, we’d have to force ourselves in through the town’s gates that were long closed. Then again we were a trio of two Beastfallen and a witch. We could push our way through just fine.
We arrived in Fomicaum without much of a problem. And sure enough, the clothes store owner actually framed Zero’s cloak and put it on display.
The man treated it like a national treasure, framing it in gold and encasing it in a single sheet of protective glass. He set up a chair and a table in front of the cloak, where he sat admiring the robe with a look on his face as if he were listening to an angel singing. Then two Beastfallen and a witch barged in with such force that left the man shocked and confused. He tumbled to the floor, knocking the chair and table over. The wine that he had been drinking so elegantly spilled all over his head.
“Wh-Who the hell are you?!” the owner shrieked. “What the fuck are you doing here?!”
I threw a bag of money at him. “Sorry pops. We’ll pay you for the clothes we bought the other day, so can we get the cloak back?”
Without waiting for the confused owner’s permission, I shattered the glass, grabbed the cloak and tossed it over to Albus. The owner let out a shameful scream.
“Stop!” he protested. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do with my life if you take that! Please, wait! You can take whatever you want, but please don’t take that away from me!”
His voice was filled with sorrow and misery, like a mother whose child was about to get killed. I felt sorry for him, but tried my best to ignore his pleas.
“I kinda feel bad for him…” Albus said.
“Then give him your underwear or something,” I said offhandedly. Albus grabbed and pulled my tail.
Letting out a scream, I sank to the floor, glaring at Albus. “What the hell are you doing? Grabbing a Beastfallen’s tail is the biggest taboo there is!”
“I know that. I’ve pulled on Holdem’s tail a lot.” Albus turned to the owner. “We’ll give you Zero’s socks for her cloak. How about it?”
“S-Socks?!”
His breath caught in his throat for a moment. He mumbled the word “socks” repeatedly, as if he just received a divine revelation, but there was nothing divine nor sacred about his thoughts.
“Really?” he asked. “You’re really going to give me her socks? Will you have her take it off in front of me?”
His eyes were dead serious. He weirded me out. Albus too.
“Should we really feel bad about this guy?” I asked.
“I’m starting to regret it, too…” Albus replied.
“Young lady,” Pooch called. “Preparations for the ritual are done.”
He had, without much effort, drawn a complex diagram of several symbols and numbers in a circle just big enough for one person to stand in.
The owner seemed to have agreed with the deal, asking, “When? When can I have it?” to Albus repeatedly. Pushing him aside, Albus and I walked up to Pooch.
“Huh. I didn’t know you could actually draw a Magic circle.”
“I didn’t serve a witch for fifteen years for nothing.”
“You’re up, kid.”
“Okay.”
Holding a candle, Albus stood in the center of the magic circle, and placed Zero’s cloak at her feet. The perverted man, enraptured by the thought of Zero’s socks, turned pale.
“Hey, what are you doing?” he asked. “Put out the fire! Please! You’re not actually doing the unthinkable, are you?!”
“Relax, man,” Pooch said in a soothing voice. “We’re not gonna set this place on fire.”
“Please don’t burn the cloak!” the owner shouted. “That’s too cruel!”
Oh, the cloak. I probably wasn’t the only one who thought that. There really was no need to show pity to this pervert.
Screaming, the owner rose to his feet, ready to grab Albus, so I stepped on him, stopping him from moving. Ignoring the owner thrashing about, I nodded to Albus.
Sorry, pops. You were the one who agreed to trade Zero’s cloak for her socks. What we do with it is up to us, wouldn’t you agree?
“Do it.”
A slow, deep breath, and a candle fell onto the cloak.
A dark room. Light from candles. Birds chirping. Wind howling. Stone walls. The smell of blood.
That was the result of Albus’ divination, made possible by sacrificing the one item that gave the clothes store owner a will to live. Apparently divinations always gave ambiguous results.
Divination was also a type of Sorcery. The ritual apparently summoned a demon, but I couldn’t see or hear it.
“The young lady summoned a demon to her own body,” Pooch said. “Not physically though, just its soul. Sometimes called seance, it’s the oldest, most basic form of witchcraft.”
To me it just looked like Albus was standing in the middle of the circle, mumbling to herself with a vacant expression.
“So, where exactly is the witch?” I asked.
“The Tower of Dawn,” Pooch replied. “It’s the tower in the direction of the rising sun. Birds built their nests there a long time ago, and they come back around this time every year.”
“Are you sure about that, former knight?”
“Nope. I haven’t been in the castle for fifteen years.”
“So it’s a gamble.”
Since the sound of the wind and birds was audible, Zero was definitely somewhere quiet.
There were only a limited number of quiet places inside the busy castle, and even Thirteenth could not possibly confine Zero near the rooms of the royalty. After all, he himself lived in an underground chamber. If birds could be heard, then Zero was not underground. In that case, she was most likely in a tower.
Albus’s reasoning was incredible. “Divination is all about analyzing the information you obtained,” she summed up, wearing the look of a typical sorcerer.
So I left Fomicaum in the middle of the night and set out for the royal capital, Plasta.
I went around the city walls and emerged at the bottom of the cliffs directly behind the castle. I made it sound easy, but I did it all at full speed. I had to get things done in the night, since there was a good chance that security would be beefed up the next morning. The success of an operation lay in speed and precision.
“Now, then. Time to launch a stealth attack on the castle.”
Plasta was a sprawling city that spread out in a gentle incline from on top of a cliff, where a castle stood. The castle was built on top of a sheer precipice; there was no ground at all behind it. A river with swift currents served as a natural moat below.
To sum it up, there were three obstacles I had to go through before I could reach the castle. The fast-flowing river in front of me, the cliff that led to the castle, and the walls of the tower guarded by soldiers. It was a very difficult mission. A normal person would probably give up immediately. As much as I hated this, I had no other choice but to do it.
Letting out a sigh to fire myself up, I dove into the river and swam all the way to the opposite side, steadily going against the current, then stuck my knife onto the riverbank to stop myself from getting swept away. I crawled up to a foothold that was so narrow it couldn’t even be called a bank. That’s one obstacle down.
Clinging to the precipice, I turn my head along with my entire upper body to look at the tower soaring on top of the castle.
“Damn, that’s high.”
I stared at the craggy rock face and the stonework of the castle wall above it. The tower’s peak, barely visible under the moonlight, was as tiny as the tip of a needle.
“Damn you, Pooch. You made it sound so easy.”
Bro, you can climb it, right?
Climb what? Wait, don’t tell me…
The cliff.
Apparently it was the only way to get into the tower from the outside.
We went our separate ways at the clothes store. Albus and Pooch had to prepare the barrier, and I couldn’t help with that. We had Albus dressed like a real girl, making her put on a wig and a dress, to fool any potential pursuers. My job was to get Zero back, but was she really in this tower?
“I’m counting on you, Albus. Show me what a Mooncaller witch can do.”
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