Carrot and Stick - How to Practice Responsible Witchcraft in a High-Crime Neighborhood - Chapter VII

Chapter VII

Shorter chappy! Oh, and Gdoc link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c3c70JUF-OpjGjuqq-sRaM-6aqv33-ulYN_UlJUpE1M/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.i5g8i5aned0z

In case you wanna make comments/find spelling mistakes!!

***

Silas looked around, ensuring himself that the area was safe. They still had no excuses to stay here, but at least there weren’t cops breaking down the door yet, and the only daemon around was wrapped in strange all-black chains on the ground.

Interesting spell, that. Some variation of Entangling Growth? The chains looked somewhat wispy and were obviously made of solidified shadows, which was also quite a neat trick. 

“Let me out! I’m going to eat your eyeballs!” the daemon shouted.

“Kind of rude... actually, no, that’s very rude,” Carrot said.

Silas stepped over to the Daemon while searching the pockets of his jacket for something. He found it, and removed the tool, showing it to the daemon. “Do you know what this is?” he asked.

The daemon started to struggle and fight against the bonds of the chains, but they suddenly tightened around him.

“I don’t,” Carrot said as she came close and inspected the device. Of course, the brim of her... his former hat, bumped into his shoulder. “Oops! My bad.”

“We’ll talk about the hat in a minute,” Silas said. “This is a demon diffuser. It’s a device that wizards working on deamon extermination use to subdue a daemon like this one.” The device was shaped like a small ball with an indented ring around its middle and a single button on one end. It was all-metal, with thin engravings within the groove.

“Looks like a pokeball,” Carrot said.

“A what?” he asked. “No, nevermind. The point is, a single use of this, and this daemon will be done for.” He stared at it in the eyes. If the daemon bat tried to use any ranged ability on him, at least, any that it could use while chained up, then he was in deep trouble. But he suspected that the daemon didn’t know that at the moment. 

“I’m not afraid of death, puny wizard!” 

That proved to be a lie the moment Silas brought the diffuser closer, the daemon hissing and spitting and trying to struggle away. “Brave, aren’t you?” he asked, rather sarcastically. “Tell you what. This can be painful or painless. It’ll be the latter if you tell me about your master.”

“I’m not telling you nothing!”

“So you will tell him?” Carrot asked.

“What?”

“Oh, ow. I guess they don’t teach good grammar to daemons,” Carrot said.

“I’m going to eat your eyeballs!”

Carrot reached up, touching her glasses and adjusting their frame. “You, ah, said that already?”

“Come on, your ‘master’ who is that? Another daemon? A stronger one? A... rogue wizard? Another Chiraeptera Cogni? A bat daemon?” Silas asked.

“I’m not telling you, Wizardling! You might kill me, but master will suck the magic out of your marrow!”

Silas sighed. He knew it was a lost cause. Trying to negotiate with a daemon was never a good idea. Still, it had been worth the attempt. He leaned forwards and pressed the button-end of the diffuser against the daemon.

It screamed.

This time, it wasn’t in anger, but in pure pain. The magic that infused its very body and made it up was sucked out of its body and into the little device, turning it cold in Silas’ hand.

Then his arm was shoved aside. “W-what are you doing?” Carrot asked.

“Removing it?” he said. “The diffuser will take it apart. There won’t be any evidence left.”

“What? Like... kill it?” Carrot asked.

“Yes? It’s a daemon?”

“It’s a cute little bat that was led astray by bad influences!” Carrot replied. She looked entirely aghast, a hand hovering over her mouth and eyes watery. “You can’t just... kill it. Killing is bad.”

“It’s a daemon,” he repeated, more firmly this time. “Not one minute ago it was going to try and eat your eyes. That wasn’t an empty threat.”

“I mean, sure, but people say things all the time,” Carrot said.

Silas shook his head, not quite believing her. “It’s an evil creature. Literally. It’s an animal warped by negative magic into a monster.”

“Then take the evil out and leave the good! It’s just a bat,” Carrot said.

“You can’t do that,” Silas replied.

“I can,” Carrot said. She knelt down next to the daemon which was panting, exhausted. “Give me just a second, okay mister bat?” Then she touched the daemon with her fingertips and closed her eyes for just a moment. “Rite of Dark Purification!”

Silas stared, a little gobsmacked, as she did what the diffuser did, only without the intermediary of a magical device.

Which was, simply put, extremely stupid. 

“Wait, stop!” he said.

Magical energy ripped from the daemon, and he watched as it shrank, though without the painful howling. In a moment, it went from the size of a small dog to... well, a size more appropriate for a bat, all the while, black, brackish energy washed off of the monster and flowed into Carrot.

She stopped only when the magic ran out, but by then Carrot herself was glowing, faintly. Black traceries were pouring off of her skin, and Silas stepped back, grip tightening around the diffuser. He could use it on her. It would almost certainly be lethal, but...

Then Carrot exhaled, and the darkness faded, turning paler until finally she smiled and opened her eyes. “Ehe!”

“Don’t ‘Ehe’ me after doing that! What even did you do?!”

“I took the bad, and then squeezed all the bad from the bad, and then kept the good bits,” Carrot said.

“That’s not how magic works!”

“Sure it is, I just did it, so obviously it works.” Carrot stood up, and with a gesture, dismissed her chains with hissed as they disappeared. “So, should we run after those other bats or... no, we should get you home. You look tired.”

Silas... slumped. He was, admittedly, exhausted. “I... I need a few minutes to process. Or a night, yes. Yes, that’s a good idea.”

“Okay! Here, you can have your hat back.”

Carrot removed the hat, with some difficulty, and held it out to him. The brim was rubbing on the floor. “Another thing to look into,” he said. “No, keep it for now? We can... look over that, and what happened today, tomorrow.”

“Okay!”

***

All in all, Carrot decided to call the afternoon a complete success. Sure, they’d maybe done a teeny-bit of breaking and entering, and maybe trespassing, but that was under extenuating circumstances. 

She felt kind of bad for Mister Silas, though. He’d list his phone--which he seemed to find very important--and had given away his magical hat.

On the other hand, she really liked her new hat. It was a magic hat, and it was big. She’d never had to worry about sunburns again, which as someone with a very very pale complexion, was kind of a recurring issue. 

Finding out that there was an evil dark daemon master living in her city was bad news, of course, but... well, it was about time.

She nodded to herself as she skipped along a sidewalk. Skipping was extra nice with such a big hat on, because it made the brim bounce with every skip. People were giving her funny looks, but she could live with that. 

After they’d left the warehouse, she had escorted Silas to his house. Half to know where it was, and half to make sure he made it there safely. She was worried that he might be ambushed on the way by another bat monster, but she hadn’t sensed anything of the sort along the way. 

Now she knew where he stayed, and where she’d be tomorrow morning. Was the crack of dawn too early?

Hmm... probably.

Still! She’d make soup tonight. That would help him feel better. Or maybe her mom could make it? Mom soup cured all wounds!

She was humming as she made it home and then climbed up the stairs to her apartment, the only break on the way was to listen to Miss Trawly who lived on the first floor and who complimented her enormous magical girl hat and then talked about when she was in a theater group for about twenty minutes while Carrot listened and nodded along.

Anyway, she made it home, said hi to her mom, gave her a big hug, then squeezed her hat into her room.

Her hat had about a third of the square footage of her entire room, which made it a little tricky. She settled on letting it sit on the floor for now.

It was such a cool hat! 

And there was a bunch more cool stuff to be had, too! “Evil wizard! Evil wizard~” she chanted under her breath as she looked for her old laptop. Then she remembered that it was in the living room and ran out to grab it. She had a ton of research to do, so she loaded up an episode of the Agartha Loop and then sat back and thought. She’d seen every season like, nine times already. Same for all the other magical girls shows. 

She just liked having noise in the back while thinking, it helped. 

Evil wizards were bad, obviously, but evil wizards were like, the number one enemy of magical girls. If she was ever going to improve and prove herself, then this was the perfect opportunity.

In the last couple of years, she’d come up with five whole spells. Her staples.

She was pretty happy with all five, only she knew that they could use some improvements. And now she had a nice wizard friend who may or may not owe her a favour or two! (Not that she’d push too hard, of course! That’d be mean!) 

Pinching her tongue between her lips, she reached over to a scrap of paper and found a pen in a cup... then another pen that actually worked, and then wrote down her entire spell list. Rite of Dark Purification, for sucking the bad outta things. Black Petal Thorns as her main ranged attack. Chains of Darkness for grabbing baddies and keeping them in place. And then Abyssal Bloom of Moonlight Manifest for self-improvement. And her last spell, the one that was mostly just theory so far, Doom.

It was a pretty good list for a fledgeling magical girl, she thought. She needed two more things, though. Some sort of cool healing magic, and a costume change.

Maybe Silas would know?

She’d totally ask him in the morning! 

***