"My mother is the reigning high priestess of our coven. My path has always been mapped to cross with Stiles because there is no one better he can learn from. Power like his can't be left unbridled, it's unheard of. And 'fallen behind' is kind of an understatement with him, I mean, I've been learning since birth."
"Hey!" Stiles exclaims with mock resentment, while pretending that he hadn't just spent the last two minutes trying to get used to Malia sounding so official while talking about him. He only ever heard her speak like a grimoire* when she was; a) Speaking to her mother, b) Quoting from the said grimoire, c) Teaching him a lesson or d) Reciting a prophecy.
She smacks at the finger he's trying to stick into her side. "Not that he's not an exceptional student. But then again you all probably knew that already," she hurries to add as she nods at Scott who is standing beside a stoic and silent Derek.
Deaton straightens from where he's leaning against the far end of the veterinary table. "I know your mother, she's a good friend of mine. Although, I wasn't aware that Stiles had made an appearance into her readings."
"Oh, well, that's because he didn't appear as himself," Malia explains slowly. "My mother just foretold a—how can I explain this...the appearance of a–giant…starburst? Something like the sun?...it floats into my lifeline at around my eighteenth year."
Stiles watches her pause and take note of the different levels of bewilderment trained at her. "Ugh, this is…harder than I thought."
Deaton's lips quirk up into a small smile. "Please, allow me. Malia comes from a long line of witches, one that dates back to the very beginnings of magic. They are of the Diamond calibre. Very strong, very solid in their foundation, almost unbreakable. If she is who she says she is – which, I believe she is – she is the next reigning high priestess of the Diamond line. In my opinion, it is an act of both fate and a type of cosmic action-reaction, that Stiles' spark happened to fully reveal itself just as he started college and was exposed to all these new people, and among them, new mystical beings," he finishes with a slight nod towards Malia.
Stiles snorts when she raises a hand to wave at Derek and Scott who are both still as motionless as statues. Lydia sits in the corner by the cabinet absently playing with her phone. She's heard all of this before.
"Okay," Scott begins thoughtfully. "So Malia's all clear, fine—but can you just explain to me how you ended up in that clearing last night? I'd barely been off the phone with you for an hour, definitely not enough time for you to drive…" Scott's voice slowly fades away along with his ability to find the words to describe Stiles' mysterious appearance. And also because Malia had arrived to pick Stiles up with his own car, obviously.
Lydia looks up from her phone and pointedly shoves it into her bag as she raises an eyebrow at Stiles. Yep, this is what she'd been waiting for.
Stiles shoots a hesitant glance at Malia. Until now, he'd never had to explain himself to anyone because he'd never told anyone what he'd been doing. He takes in a breath and tries to get all the words and terminology right in his head. After all, contrary to what it looked like, or what everyone thought, he still felt very much like a novice instead of a practicing mage.
-x-
Derek watches Stiles with a focus that he hasn't used on the kid in years. He's surprised at the way his wolf sneers at the playfulness Stiles and Malia display towards each other. Makes a mental note to evaluate it later.
Stiles places big palms with twitchy hands onto the examination table. And since when did he start noticing the size of Stiles' hands anyway?
"Well it was an accident - again," Stiles declares immediately, like he's said the same thing so many times before. "I got off the phone with Scott after double checking that they did all the pixie traps right, and then I started doing homework – not the kind for school – I was practicing Divination," he says after a quick glance towards Deaton and Lydia – who were following quite well, as opposed to the lost look on Scott's face.
Derek doesn't interrupt and instead tries to remember what little he knew about…fortune telling. Because that's what it was, essentially. Divination was fortune telling. He notices Scott's mouth open, but before the alpha can voice the question Derek knows is coming, he turns his head slightly and murmurs under his breath, "fortune telling. He was trying to see the future." Scott shuts his mouth again after a slight shift of his head towards Derek.
And since when did he and Scott start to flow almost as well as ScottandStiles did anyway?
"So, I was scrying through my mirror, just random things. What I would have for lunch the next day. If the paper I just handed in would come back with an A. If Lydia was dropping by in the next week or so. And, I don't know, my brain must have thought of Scott or the pack somehow? Because the next thing I know, I'm seeing them in the forest and there are no pixies, and Isaac's about to get his throat cut open and…I panicked. I closed the scrying window, I pulled on some shoes and bluffed a sigil jump from my dorm room."
Derek's trying to keep up with all the unfamiliar terminology. Scrying? Sigil jump? But he's getting the gist of it and he knows Scott is too. Stiles is somehow able to magically teleport himself to different places now. Who knew?
"No it's not like that," Stiles adds quickly as he points a finger at him and Scott. Because of course he knows what Scott's thinking, and coincidentally what Derek's thinking too. "It's never worked that well for me before, ask these guys!" Stiles exclaims, gesturing wildly towards Lydia and Malia. "I've only ever been able to do short distances and it's flaky at the best of times, sometimes it doesn't even work, or I end up somewhere completely random. All I can think of that would've helped it work is that I was really worried about you guys and I didn't – I didn't wanna be too late," Stiles' voice cracks with the last part and his eyes shift down to the hands he's lowered back on to the exam table.
Scott sighs and drops a hand on Stiles' shoulder from across the table as Derek connects the last few dots in his mind. Lydia hadn't been part of the mission either but she'd been there. She'd been there because she'd predicted that someone – Stiles – would die.
"And you guys know the rest," Stiles finishes softly.
"No," Lydia interjects, rising from her seat. "Tell us the rest," she continues as she crosses her arms over her chest.
Malia looks at Stiles. "What is she talking about? What did you do?"
Derek watches Stiles glance at her. And if he weren't watching Stiles as closely as he'd been, he would've missed the quick strips of gold that flit across Stiles' hazel irises one after the other in quick succession. It reminds him of the shooting stars he and Cora used to glimpse falling through the sky while out running in the woods, except now, they're in Stiles' eyes instead.
-x-
Busted.
Stiles quickly sends Malia a series of Flashes. The moments he tactfully skipped in the jeep.
The pack standing in the clearing, frozen and motionless. Facing the witch and her mouth moving soundlessly as he spoke to her.
Angry witch.
Very, very angry witch raising her arms.
His arms out in front of him, catching the witch's magic. His hands flat against the earth. A flash of the members of the coven frozen in mid-scream before exploding into piles of ash. Standing in front of Scott and the others. The sky above him and Derek's worried face.
He ends it abruptly when he accidentally lets slip a clear Flash of Scott mouthing you died, which could be heard very audibly despite their mental conversations always lacking sound.
Malia gasps and smacks him on the back of the head.
"You died?!" she screams incredulously. "Are you freaking kidding me? What have I told you about control, I taught you better than this! Jesus, Stiles, you've gotta stop jumping in with both feet!"
Scott's whipping his head back and forth between them, surprise and confusion clear on his face. "What the hell? What just happened?"
-x-
Derek can almost feel Scott's confusion as his own, and if it weren't for him being the not-so-talkative type he would probably be just as vocal about it. So Stiles has somehow developed some telepathy skills along with all the other things he'd been (not) telling them. Who knew?
And as always, Stiles knows the direction of Scott's – and coincidentally Derek's – thoughts.
"No! It's not like that either," the kid blurts out quickly with a hint of exasperation. "It only works with her," he adds as he gestures lamely towards Malia. "I told you, I'm actually not that good," Stiles murmurs, face flushing with embarrassment.
"On the contrary," Deaton interjects calmly. "From what I've gathered, you were able to singlehandedly destroy a full coven. The high priestess you faced off with would've had the power of the whole coven at her disposal, not to mention a few extra. That's twelve witches, Stiles. You may not have meant to do what you did, but you did do it. You should try to refrain from doubting yourself. The belief you commit to your spark affects the way it behaves, and consequently the things you can do with it. If you believe that it hardly works, then it won't. But with more training and practice, I have no doubt that this spark of yours could easily surpass the magic of the strongest mage I know of."
Stiles lets out a disbelieving snort. "Don't say Merlin," he mumbles sarcastically.
Deaton meets his eyes without flinching and replies, "I was going to say Emrys*, but yes, that name is also adequate."
Derek smells the anxiety that begins to emanate from Stiles at the same time that his expression loses its humour.
"You've only been practicing for a few years, you're bound to have a few slip-ups. But like I said, you're an exceptional student," Malia adds assuredly.
No-one else is paying close enough attention but Derek smells Stiles' anxiety kick up another notch, watches the tremor in his hands worsen and the kid move to hide it by shoving a restless fist into his hair.
"Can we not get into this right now?" Stiles retorts shortly, eyes boring holes into Deaton and Malia. "We've got bigger fish to fry at the moment, don't you think?"
"Yeah, like if you guys have any idea why they ambushed us in the first place," Scott tacks on after his best friend.
Stiles gives a slight shake of his head, scent of anxiety fading down to a light thrum beneath his skin.
Deaton clears his throat and moves to open a locked cabinet partially hidden by one of the darker corners of the exam room. Derek feels the glamour spell cloaking it. He knows it makes that corner of the room unnoticeable and unclear to anyone not meant to see it.
"Scott, you said you counted twelve witches, correct? There was no chance of you miscounting at all?"
"They were all out of the woods by the time I started counting. She may have had us frozen in place but I could still see and hear them."
"There aren't many covens that large on this side of the country," Malia murmurs thoughtfully. "My mother would know if one were being formed to rival the size of ours, and we haven't been notified of such a thing happening."
Deaton nods in agreement. "Exactly. The Wiccan community are very organised when it comes to keeping track of their kind. The foundation of a coven is detrimental to its success or failure. Quite similar to werewolf packs, a successful coven needs a certain degree of trust and familiarity. This is the reason why most covens are formed out of family ties. Magic would already be running through a family, and a close one would give a coven that degree of trust. And covens only grow when its members are willing to vouch for new witches. Most covens these days are quite small in size – Malia, please correct me if I'm wrong – but it would take at least a few years to build a group of twelve with that kind of training and power. One must undertake several trials to assess their skill level and the type of magic they have an affinity towards."
Malia nods in silent agreement.
"Which brings me to my next hypothesis," Deaton continues. "If Malia's mother, a well-known, well-informed high priestess within the Wiccan community hasn't been informed of this development at all, and not one of their people have been able to sense even an inkling of this coven or its formation, could it be possible that a higher power has been invoked? One that was interested in taking the blood of a true alpha?"
"Like a summoning, or a séance," Malia murmurs thoughtfully.
Derek is fascinated by the way thought after thought is crossing Stiles' face. He watches Stiles' head tilt to the side as if he were listening for something, sees the same shooting-star-lights flit through his eyes as he slowly turns to look at Lydia.
"Do that again," he commands softly.
-x-
His vision tunnels in until everyone in the room fades out and only Lydia remains within his line of sight. They'd never really had the need to do this at a regular basis, but as she'd grown into her powers, sometimes Lydia was able to glimpse bits and pieces from the moments of the deaths she predicts. And since Stiles had started the Flashing with Malia, he and Lydia had decided to experiment to see if they were able to do something similar. It wasn't the same as projecting choice images to someone – he had no control over what he saw – but Stiles had discovered that he was able to tap into Lydia's predictions in the same way he called forward his divination skills. Sort of like mental eavesdropping, for lack of a better word.
The banshee in Lydia brings back the recollection it had just dispelled. He focuses on the female drawl that filters through. Brave alpha, such beautiful red eyes you have.
Stiles flicks his eyes back to Lydia, shakes his head a little and raises a finger, signalling for her to skip forward. Lydia complies silently. Years of practice had made her an expert at replaying what she saw during predictions, especially if they turned out to be useful.
Invenies potestas in de sanguis de lupus. The words are whisper soft and Stiles has to strain to hear them clearly.
He doesn't have enough familiarity with Latin to decipher more than one word.
Wolf.
-x-
So, Derek guesses that with the secret of Stiles' magic out in the open, the performance of actual magic was also now out in the open. Derek has no idea what Lydia and Stiles are mentally – and, yes, it's definitely mentally – exchanging, but he thinks he's exclaimed enough surprise for the day that he can't really be more surprised any more.
It's been a while since they've needed Lydia's glimpses from her death predictions and she'd always had to describe them to the pack out loud before. She never said anything about Stiles being able to 'see' them too.
"Blood," Lydia's voice breaks through his thoughts. Her wide eyes are distant and, similar to Stiles, her head is cocked to one side, ear tilted up as if she was listening to something.
"Wolf," Stiles adds in a murmur. "Blood of the wolf?"
"Find the power in the blood of the wolf," Lydia corrects softly.
Deaton turns to the cabinet filled with old books, runs a hand over the old, cracked spines and hooks a finger over the top of a thick, leather bound tome. He brings it back to the examination table and slowly starts flipping through the pages as Lydia and Stiles continue to listen for…whatever they're listening for.
The suspense ends abruptly when Lydia lets out a frustrated huff of breath and shakes her head. "I can't. That's it, I can't get any more."
"It's alright," Deaton murmurs slowly. "That was actually enough to narrow our list down to two options, and while one of them requires for one to ingest a werewolf's freshly harvested heart, the other only seeks to drink the blood of werewolves—"
"—for the key to eternal life," Malia and Stiles finish off together. The dawning realisation on their faces tells Derek that he's missing something, again.
Malia throws her head up towards the ceiling and lets out a frustrated groan. "We're not gonna make it to class, are we?" she exclaims dejectedly.
Derek feels his heart skip when Stiles' eyes meet his gaze as he replies to Malia with a resigned "nope".
-x-
Glossary
Grimoire (n.) - A book of magic spells and invocations
Emrys - From 'Merlin' (TV Show), Emrys is the name given to him by the druids.