Early Warning
The Toxic Twins have a gift for magery...God help us all.
Warning! This is AU from the end of Mortal Coil on.
I own nothing.
...
"Come on, Stephanie!" whined Carol. "You have to at least check!"
"Yeah," added Crystal. "It's not fair for you to keep all the fun to yourself."
Valkyrie rolled her eyes. She must be reaching some kind of record with the amount of eye-rolling she'd been doing.
It had been three weeks since Ghastly was declared an Elder and Remnant-Tanith had been at Valkyrie's house. Since then everything had been feeling sort of unreal. It felt like some sort of delayed shock, as if Valkyrie could only allow herself to realize everything that had happened after the fact. She'd spent a lot of the past three weeks avoiding her parents and having long, quiet talks with Fletcher over the phone.
There wasn't any work she could throw herself into to distract herself from the events of the last month. When Skulduggery had been taken, Valkyrie knew there was a way to get him back. Valkyrie had no idea how she could get Tanith back, or stop herself from becoming Darquesse, and these were both facts she dwelled on constantly. She hadn't been sleeping very well because of this.
When the twins had invited her over to their house for a day while Fergus and Beryl were out of town, Valkyrie, apparently suffering from a sudden absence of sense, accepted their invitation with enthusiasm. Anything to distract her, she supposed.
That was the reason Valkyrie was in Carol and Crystal's kitchen, listening to them ask her for magic lessons. She should have known that all the twins would have wanted to talk about was magic, and the possibility that they might be magic, and will you teach us please, Stephanie? That was, in essence, their conversation of the past three hours.
However, in spite of herself, Valkyrie had to admit they had a point. Carol and Crystal were descended from the same line of Ancients as she was, and Valkyrie was never one to get rid of a potential resource. Even if Carol and Crystal didn't have magic, it would be good for them to at least know more about it. They already knew magic existed, and as far as Valkyrie knew, even knowing was enough to put you at risk for random attacks by mad mages intent on world domination.
Valkyrie sighed dramatically. "All right," she said. "I'll see what I can do."
Carol beamed. Crystal wasn't as enthusiastic, but she seemed happy anyway.
"There's no fast way to see if you can do magic," warned Valkyrie. "It took me a week to figure it out."
Crystal looked a bit apprehensive, but Carol listened to Valkyrie intently.
"Okay, the very first thing you have to do is take a name-"
"What do names have to do with anything?" interrupted Crystal, frowning.
Valkyrie narrowed her eyes at Crystal. "If you don't have a taken name, people can control you with your given one. I'm not sure why that is, I only know that it happens."
"So magicians have more than one name?" asked Carol.
"Yeah," replied Valkyrie. "They have three, actually."
"What's the third one?"
"That's your true name. Most people don't know theirs, so they're usually pretty safe. However, if somebody learns your true name before you do, they can control everything about you. When somebody uses your given name like that, it's like they're ordering you to do something, but they can't get inside your head and order that. With your true name, somebody can tell you how to think, what to feel. That doesn't happen very often, though, and there's ways to protect your true name if you know it."
"So your true name and your given name make you more vulna-vulnura-weaker?" asked Carol.
"Only if somebody else finds your true name before you do. If you take a name, people can't ever control you with your given name. Even if you don't have magic, having a taken name gives you some protection."
"Oh." Carol and Crystal mulled this over. By the looks on their faces, Valkyrie could tell it was a lot to take in.
It was quiet for a minute, and Valkyrie reveled in the silence before Crystal said "So, Valkyrie's your taken name?"
"Yeah. Valkyrie Cain."
"Are they all that weird?" judging by the way Carol nodded in agreement, this was an important concern for them.
"Well...a bit. We like to take names that age well." In sudden urgency, Valkyrie added "Don't take a name that sounds cool. Just don't. You don't want to be a five hundred year old scholar and have a name like Razor or Vixen."
"You know somebody named Vixen?" asked Carol, wincing.
"No. But the guy I work with, Skulduggery-" Valkyrie hadn't told the twins about the people she worked with. It wasn't out of some sense of malice, they just hadn't asked her about her job. "-knows a lady named Jet, and she was a bit pudgy the last time he saw her, with spinach in her teeth."
"Now I see where you're coming from on the weird names thing," said Carol in sudden understanding. "I think that name only works when you look like you're twenty."
"Exactly."
"You said the person you worked with. You have a job?" Crystal was curious to know. "You don't go to school or anything? Not even a magic school?"
Valkyrie shook her head. "No. Skulduggery and a man named Solomon Wreath teach me magic, and T...my point is, I don't go to a school. I'm a Sanctuary detective, but that could change. The Sanctuary and Skulduggery aren't always on the friendliest terms."
"How much do you get paid?"
Valkyrie opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. "...now that you mention it, I don't get paid at all." she hadn't really thought about it. She had never really needed money, so it had never come up. "I don't get paid for saving the world and rescuing Skulduggery on a usual basis. That's stupid."
"Really stupid." agreed Carol.
"I'm going to have to ask Skulduggery about that."
"...okay, money troubles aside, should we pick names before we begin learning magic?" asked Crystal.
"Only if you have a name in mind. I'd been trying magic for a day or two before my name came to me. You probably want to learn about magic while you're thinking about a name. They kind of go together, and there are different types of magic."
Carol and Crystal looked at each other.
"Do you have a name?" Carol asked.
"No. You?" asked Crystal.
"No."
Crystal turned back to Valkyrie. "We might as well start learning, right? Did you have a plan? Are there like...basic magic teachers?"
Valkyrie pursed her lips in thought. Maybe she should ask Skulduggery to see if he could teach them...? No. He wouldn't even bother unless he knew they could do something, and even then he might not. How did she begin?
Ah.
"I have an idea...but it's going to involve reading."
Carol winced.
.
"This is a library?" asked the twins in unison, staring at China's apartment building.
Valkyrie had called Fletcher to take her and the twins to China's library for an afternoon. Valkyrie figured China wouldn't mind, especially since Crystal liked reading and Carol's only problem was that she was a bit slow at it. The point was, the pair of them were surprisingly unlikely to cause trouble in the place.
Fletcher had dropped the three of them off and was going to come back in a few hours while Valkyrie pointed out the elementary magic books out to the twins.
"Yeah. It's actually very nice. The only problem is that China, who owns the place, is the most beautiful woman in the world." said Valkyrie, leading them inside.
"Why is that a problem?" Carol wanted to know.
"Because it means that she can get you to do whatever she wants if she smiles too hard at you. Just try not to look directly at her face, and don't tell her your name. Also be very quiet, don't steal her books, and for the love of God, return any books you've checked out on time."
The twins looked at each other nervously and followed Valkyrie very quietly up the stairs to China's library. The pair of them took a sharp intake of breath upon seeing the library, hidden as it was right behind the hallways, but otherwise didn't make a sound. Valkyrie supposed her warnings were effective.
Since Valkyrie didn't really trust the pair to be on their own, she found the section on names conveniently placed next to the section on elementary magic, got a pair of books each for them, and ushered them to a shadowy corner where she was fairly sure they wouldn't be disturbed.
Valkyrie herself selected a book on advanced necromancy, a weighty and imposing tome bound in suspicious-looking black leather. She was enjoying the peace and quiet when Crystal nudged her arm.
"What?" she whispered.
"Do you have a hairpin or something on you?" asked Crystal just as quietly. "We want to try out the elemental magic." she tapped a page of the open book laying in her lap.
Valkyrie searched her pockets and came up with a stray paperclip. How it had gotten there she had no idea. She passed it to Crystal and resumed reading. It was quiet again for a few minutes until Carol let out a strangled gasp. Valkyrie looked up askance.
"I moved it!" said Carol in a hushed voice. Crystal nodded in agreement. "I don't even know what I was doing, I just pushed at something, and it moved!"
Valkyrie raised her eyebrows in surprise. "That's faster than I ever did!" she said quietly, trying not to feel jealous. "I don't really know what it means if you can do magic this quickly. Maybe you're best at elemental magic?" she glanced at Crystal, who was looking put out, and added "There are a lot of different disciplines. Elemental isn't my best, either, but I was doing it for the longest time. I think if Carol has magic, it means you do too. I'm not sure though."
Crystal nodded again, and Carol, smiling now, went back to pushing at the paperclip, though she didn't make it move again.
...
Regular readers of Shadows and Bones will recognize my frequently-used theme of making Carol and Crystal magic. In case you're wondering, yes, Carol and Crystal's taken names, powers and aptitudes will remain the same.
This is why Carol, whose aptitude is with elemental magic, has better luck than either Crystal or Stephanie(/Val) with her first try. If Crystal or Stephanie(/Val) had wanted to practice necromantic magic instead, they would have been better at it than Carol. I'm asserting that the Edgley Ancient blood makes their magic that much more powerful and more obvious.
Just because I'm halting Shadows and Bones for a bit doesn't mean I'm going to stop other stuff. Since this is mostly AU from Mortal Coil on, I figure I'm safe from continuity errors. I'll probably use the main plot of Death Bringer and change it to my favor, but I'll take a while to get to that point.
Also, I don't know if Valkyrie gets paid or not for working with Skulduggery. It's never mentioned.
