My chapters are pretty short for now but when more action starts happening, they should get longer. A good thing about shorter chapters, though, is that they get updated faster! Anyway, here's Nekozawa doing his thing:
...
The corridor was dark, filled with shadows and the silver light flooding through thick windows like the spindles of spiderwebs. Nekozawa felt quite comfortable as he strolled down the marble floor, footsteps silent from years of practice with creepy entrances.
He stopped at the door at the end of the hall and creaked it open, seeing firelight dance along the stone wall from the bottom of the shadowy stairs and hearing low voices echoing up to greet him.
How delightfully dark, he thought to himself, stepping onto the landing with a pleased, sinister smile. He swept downstairs and took in the sight that lay before him.
The stairs led to a small part of the basement, pipes stretching down the stone walls and disappearing in the back. In the middle of the room there was a small pit where someone had torn up the floorboards and reinforced it with large stones. Raging in the pit was a fire that caused the light to flicker eerily on the faces of the rest of the cloaked figures in the room that stood around it. Some of them looked up and regarded him with an annoyed look but one face in particular lit up at his presence.
"Nekozawa-san!" Daisuke exclaimed, gesturing for him to come forward.
"Hello," he greeted with a twisted smile, adoring the atmosphere. He was never able to make the chemistry room his former Black Magic Club met in as mysterious and spooky as he wanted. High schools tend to remove some of the dark fear that comes hand in hand with black magic. But the room where the Dark Arts Club met was splendid. It was simple but eerie and the sounds echoed like ghosts in the enclosed space.
"The Dark Queen will be here soon," Daisuke explained, pressing a small paper pouch in Nekozawa's hand. "When she gets here, we're supposed to throw these onto the flames."
Nekozawa lifted the pouch and investigated it, noting the heavy scent.
"It makes the fire turn colours," Daisuke added. "It's pretty cool."
"Here she comes! The Dark Queen: Kimiko Rin-sama!" one of the figures announced and all of the attention turned to the steps where black heeled boots stepped into view, slowly making their way down the stairs and showing more of the mysterious figure with it.
When she came fully into view, the Dark Arts Club members threw their pouches onto the flames, Nekozawa a split second behind them, and the fire roared, the flames flickering different colours - blue, purple, white, green. When they died down to the quiet fire they were before the commotion, Nekozawa could finally observe the mysterious Dark Queen.
She was tall, dressed entirely in black, her eyes lined heavily and her lips like black rose petals. Her hair fell to her chin in jagged, jet stands, and her eyes were the colour of ice and steel - just as cold and hard too. Her eyes fell on him and she stepped forward.
"So we did get a new one," she mused, reaching to flick the side of his hood and he took a step back. The young woman was terribly intimidating.
"What interest do you have in the Dark Arts?" she demanded, voice hard.
"It runs in my blood," he replied with a sharp head tilt and dark smirk.
"It runs in all our blood," she remarked. "It's why we're here."
"But I am descended from the Tokarev Dynasty of Russia," he went on. "My family has worshiped cats and cat shaped items for generations." He lifted Beelzenef from the folds of his cloak. "I, myself, am certainly not a novice to the dark arts."
"Hmm," she thought aloud, moving her eyes along his body and taking in the cloak and black hair hiding much of his face. "You do look creepy enough," she muttered and turned to face them all. "Tonight we shall cast our anger into the flames and scry. We shall see if good fortune is in store for us this semester."
With that, she produced a small black leather pouch and thrust her hand inside, pulling out a fistful of black powder that she tossed onto the flames with a dramatic flourish. She turned her back on the fire and took a few steps away as fuzzy images began to dance with each flicker of firelight and the club members gasped, making her turn back around and her metal eyes to widen.
A smile played at Nekozawa's lips. Ah, black magic. It had been too long since he had attended a proper scrying. While the so-called Dark Queen's form was a bit off and she evidently prized dramatics over quality, true images had been conjured. He looked into the fire, squinting his eyes to make out the static pictures and saw a running cat, an alter, blood.
"Behold!" The Queen, Rin, announced, opening her arms and facing them all. "I have projected my sight for you all to gaze upon!"
Nekozawa broke his concentration on the images to regard her with an unamused stare, hidden under the hem of his hood. She didn't project anything at all. Did she not know how this particular method of image scrying worked?
When he looked back the images were simply a mess of smokey grey on the glowing fire.
