When Amity had returned to the Blight Manor after taking her fairy godmother home, her mother had locked herself in her study to do who knows what; normally she would have assumed it was something related to business or negotiations, but now that she knew what there was really in that study she was sure she was doing something magical. For a moment she even feared that her mother was building voodoo dolls to get revenge on Lilith, Eda or even Luz, but then she decided to trust her; she doubted she would fall for such petty tricks after she had clearly shown that she wasn't afraid to fight the two fairies, so she hadn't gone to check and spent the day studying. Edric and Emira had only returned late in the evening, and both of them seemed to be feeling a little better than the night before, although Emira's hair was disheveled and her knuckles were a little scraped as if she had punched something and Edric's face had a tired expression, typical of someone who had to laboriously hold his sister until she calmed down to prevent her from breaking the bones in her hand. As soon as they returned, the first thing they did was run to see how Amity was doing and to find out how the meeting between Odalia and Lilith had gone, and since it was now late in the evening and their bellies were rumbling loudly they had decided to listen to the story while they were in the kitchen enjoying a delicious sweet and sour hare. "Wow, so if mom gets really pissed off she transforms and gets scales and fangs?" Edric muttered as Amity finished. "How come it never happened when she got mad at us?"
"Yeah. With all the times we made her lose her temper, I'm surprised she never showed up in that form" Emira said. In fact, and she had been thinking about that practically all day, if their mother was a witch it was already surprising just the fact that the two of them had never been cursed with all the pranks they had done... even if she remembered vaguely that once at the age of thirteen when her mother had discovered that she and Edric had skipped school and that they had also ignored her scoldings, both of them had no longer been able to touch normal food for a month: every time they tried they felt bad, except for the chives, the most disgusting thing they had ever tasted, which however they were forced to eat so as not to die of hunger. At the time Emira had blamed it on some strange influence, but now that she knew that her mother was a witch she had a strong suspicion that that time she had been angry enough to cast a curse on them. And then there was another episode, when she was five, when she smashed a window with a balloon and refused to admit her mistake, and suddenly her hair began to fall out day after day until she was almost bald; her mother had watched her despair almost impassively, and then when she had begged her to help her, she had told her that perhaps karma was punishing her for her actions, and when Emira had knelt down and admitted her mistake by promising to never do it again and begging for forgiveness, suddenly a thick mane of green hair had reappeared on her head. Emira had almost removed that episode from her memory, but now that she knew her mother was a witch, a lot of things were starting to make sense.
Amity shrugged. "Well... I think mom was really tense today" she said. "Ever since she saw Lilith and Eda she was much more serious and stern than she had ever been. I think she was ready to fight at the slightest sign of danger. And then they started arguing... I think what Luz said was just the last straw for her". In fact, she too was surprised that her mother, who normally had practically absolute self-control, had given in so easily to Luz's provocations, but thinking about it carefully at that moment her mental state must not have been the best: after all, within less than twenty-four hours her identity as a witch had been unmasked, she had had to remember her less than beautiful past, she had had to talk to her daughter and explain a lot of things to her, she had discovered that Amity had a fairy godmother, she had been forced to meeting two creatures who were her natural enemy and on top of that she had also had to get into a fight with them; Amity believed that for this time completely losing one's temper was more than legitimate, in fact it was almost a must.
"What do you think she is doing now in her private study?" Edric asked curiously. "Perhaps some kind of magic?"
"Maybe she's sacrificing a goat!" Emira exclaimed, and then she blushed at the shocked look of her siblings. "In short... according to the stories the witches, in performing some rituals, slaughter black goats..."
"It's a legend" Odalia said entering the kitchen so suddenly that the three siblings almost jumped. "Actually for those rituals you are referring to, Emira, what is needed is only the blood of the goat, we don't need to slaughter it, we can take it from it even just by making a small cut on its thigh. That story about always having to cut the throat of the poor animal was born from the fact that a long time ago during a war between two nations a witch, seeing her country's army in difficulty, performed a ritual in a hurry, and to do it as sooner as possible instead of taking the blood from the goat and then pouring it on the ritual she took directly the goat and slaughtered it there. From there this legend was born, and from what I have just heard it has apparently never been forgotten"
Emira blushed brightly, but Odalia ignored her and sat down at the table and began to eat, then she said: "Mittens, as soon as we finish dinner come with me to my study. I have prepared something to allow you to learn at least the basics of dark magic"
Amity's eyes lit up: "We're going to do magic!?"
"You can't do magic yet, Mittens" Odalia reminded her. "However, you proved that you have a good magical affinity when you summoned Ghost, and furthermore a basic knowledge of dark magic will be essential when the time comes for you to become a white witch, so I will at least give you some theoretical lessons"
Amity was a little disappointed at not being able to do magic, but after all she certainly couldn't expect her magic to miraculously unlock sooner than it should, so she had to settle for the theory for the moment, which was still something very fascinating. And apparently her two siblings felt the same way, because they immediately stood up and exclaimed: "Let's go right now!"
Odalia raised an eyebrow. "You two are not witches, I already told you"
"We know, but we still want to attend this... private lesson, let's say!" Edric said with a toothy grin.
Odalia shook her head in disappointment. "If you only put half this enthusiasm into your studies, you would get excellent grades" she said in a sour voice, and the two twins felt guilt gripping their hearts and chewing on them and they cringed under that stern look. But then Odalia added: "If you want to watch, go ahead. But don't live in fantasy, you won't become capable of using magic"
"It doesn't matter, we just want to learn!" the twins replied, although Amity had the strong impression that their mother's last sentence had gone completely unheard.
The family quickly finished eating, then when Odalia finally stood up all three of her children followed quickly behind her, clearly eager to get started. As they left the kitchen Amity noticed that her mother had left a plate full of food on the table, where her father normally sat... those few times he came to eat with them at the table. Usually it was Edric and Emira who left something for their father when he worked late (pretty much always), or even brought it to him in his laboratory, but at that moment neither of them probably wanted to do a favor or even just see their male parent. Amity wondered why her mother had decided to do her father that kindness after he had clearly shown his contempt for her and witches in general... but after all, she reflected, her mother and father had at least once loved each other, at least according to the story she had told them, and even if she highly doubted that there was still any feeling between them, perhaps she didn't want to see him hungry anyway... even if the food she had left on his plate was still composed of poorly seasoned leftovers, a clear example of what she thought of him.
The four went to the study, and there they found the secret door already open and a chair for Amity; Emira and Edric simply got a couple of pillows and sat on the floor. Amity noticed that the items on the shelves, from books to herbs to feathers to everything else in between, had been arranged differently, clearly in a pattern that made it easier for a person lecturing to quickly find them and illustrate them. "Mittens, as I told you, this will be a lesson aimed at understanding the basics of how dark magic works" Odalia began. "They will be fundamental to you both during your transition to becoming a white witch, and afterwards for any magic you want to use, so listen carefully to what I have to tell you"
Amity had already entered in the study with the idea of not missing even a syllable of her mother's words, so she was already ready to listen more attentively than she had ever done in her life, and incredible to say the same seemed to apply to her siblings. "Dark magic, like all types of magic, has different uses, spells, potions, arts and so on; however, they can be grouped into four broad categories. These four categories are, in order of potential and difficulty in generating them, the fighting, the curses, the rituals and finally the contracts" Odalia said raising four fingers, as if wanting to highlight her words. "The simplest obviously is combat. It is the method that your monster hunter friend, Hunter, uses. It essentially consists in manipulating magic as a weapon in order to use it to cause damage. You must control it with your mind and give it substance; once you've done that, you can use it in any way you want. You can create weapons with it, make existing objects twirl, or even condense the magic into a single point and release it in the form of a powerful energy blast. Observe..."
Under the gaze of her children, Odalia abandoned her human form and returned to that of a witch; Edric and Emira looked in awe, as it was the first time they had seen their mother look like that, and they both agreed with Luz that it was the coolest thing they had ever seen. Odalia then began to move her fingers and beams of emerald light appeared around her arms which thickened to form armor and protections, and axes, swords, bows and any other type of weapon appeared in her hands; then she opened her arms wide and this time it was the books in the room that were enveloped in the emerald aura and began to swirl around her, forming a shield with their pages. It reminded Amity of the way Hunter had whirled Boscha and Skara around the library, even though her mother had a decidedly more elegant and refined style. Then Odalia put the books back on their shelf and raised her palm, and the green aura concentrated within it and then exploded in a rapid emerald ray that lightly singed a part of the wall, on which she had previously placed a protection on purpose. "As you can see, this category of magic is almost purely for defensive purposes" Odalia said. "Obviously it can also be used in other ways, for example instead of using a book as a shield you could simply raise it in front of your eyes and flip through the pages to read it, but in any case the primary purpose remains that of fighting. It is the weakest category of dark magic because it is based on a basic manipulation without any major intervention, and in fact it doesn't leave permanent marks after use... speaking of magical marks at least, in the case of physical wounds it depends on how good you are at fighting and inflicting blows. Precisely because it is weak, however, it is also advantageous in a hand-to-hand fight, given that it doesn't require words or magic formulas to be used or particular concentration and it doesn't waste too much of the user's energy, therefore making it very effective in a similar context. Obviously, the more powerful the witch, the stronger the defensive magic she can use"
Amity listened raptly. Even though she had already seen Hunter use dark magic with his staff, and thus she knew the fighting style her mother had just shown them, it was fascinating to see it with a detailed explanation about it. She felt incredibly excited as she listened and better understood what was effectively her own nature.
"The second category of dark magic that a witch can call upon are curses, or anathemas, or spells... call them what you like, they are the same thing" Odalia continued. "They are a little more complicated: they consist in inserting a certain amount of dark magic into a person and making sure that it causes certain effects on that person's body or that it alters certain parts of his mind or spirit, or even attributes such as luck or the chances of finding love. To achieve this you need not only greater concentration, but you also need to use the right magic formula to harness your will within the dark magic that you will then insert into that person's body. Thanks to this, curses are more powerful than purely defensive magic, and unlike it they don't vanish as soon as you stop using them, but rather last until the cursed person dies or someone breaks the curse; this is because the dark magic will feed using the energy of the body in which you have inserted it and will continue to repeat the order that you have imposed on it endlessly. Look carefully, I will make one in slow motion and making the magical flow visible"
As Amity watched, her mother moved her hand and put three fingers spread out in front of her face, and then uttered some incomprehensible words; a black flow emerged from her fingers which condensed into a sphere and which seemed to absorb the woman's words as if they were something physical, and which then moved and hit Emira squarely, entering her chest. The girl rolled her eyes, and then her legs turned blue and started moving randomly in every direction, forcing her to stand up and start dancing. Edric rolled with laughter and Amity couldn't stop herself from giggling too; Emira was a little less happy. "O-Okay, I'm sure Amity understood it right! Now stop it!" she exclaimed as she tried to keep her balance.
But her mother gave her a menacing sneer in response. "Should I stop it? I don't know... are you still planning on skipping school tomorrow?"
Emira swallowed. Apparently now that her mother had confessed to being a witch she no longer had any qualms about using magic to force them to behave well. "Okay, okay, I'll go to school, I promise!"
"Good. And bring your imbecile brother too" Odalia said snapping her fingers, and finally Emira's legs stopped moving and returned to their normal color. The girl collapsed on the ground, distraught, and she glared at her siblings, making them stop laughing. "As you can see, Mittens, curses are quite efficient; keep in mind that I have now shown it to you, but in reality a curse would be invisible and much faster than I did it. However since it no longer has any connection with you and always just keeps repeating the same function, a curse is also easy to break for anyone who understands something about magic. Of course, a powerful and careful witch can also insert defenses to make the curse very difficult to break, but still it remains a very imprecise and weak category of dark magic. Furthermore, precisely because you would no longer have any connection with the dark magic with which you cursed that person, you could never know if the curse was carried out or if someone broke it unless you see it in person or someone tells you. Curses are still an excellent tool to use against your enemies or potentially dangerous people, but if you want to obtain more powerful and difficult to break results, then you need to aim to more powerful and complicated categories of magic. And this brings us to the third category of dark magic, the rituals"
"I'm not playing as a guinea pig again!" Emira immediately screamed. "Use Edric this time!"
"Hey! Aren't siblings supposed to be ready to sacrifice each other? Instead, you throw me into the claws of a witch?" Edric protested.
"Yes, and I'll even pay her to roast you, and I'll laugh when that will happen!" Emira replied, clearly not taking kindly to the fact that her brother had laughed at her while she was cursed.
"Be calm, I don't intend to use any of you as guinea pigs for such powerful magic. I want to have children again, not empty soulless bodies" Odalia said, and then she continued the explanation: "Rituals are the next stage of dark magic; they consist of forcefully gathering an enormous amount of magical energy in a single point and then giving a command to it, and finally releasing it all at once. Because of this the rituals can last hours or sometimes even days, and the places where they are performed are particularly rich in dark magic; furthermore, the more powerful the ritual, the more it is necessary to use artifacts and objects to stabilize it and prevent the dark magic from escaping your control and hitting you, reducing you to ash. If the ritual is successful, the end result is similar to that of a curse, but much, much broader. The most powerful rituals allow you to reduce entire regions to deserts, cause floods, control the minds of entire crowds, or even summon entities from a different plane of existence and force them to serve you. Obviously the more powerful the ritual, the higher the quantity of magical energy that it will be need, and with it greater concentration is also required; and also the level of danger, as I told you, is extreme. The greatest advantage of a ritual is that since its effect is so vast it is not easy to break even for the most experienced fairy or wizard; the only way is to destroy the seal created at the point where the ritual was carried out, which is often well hidden and protected. Furthermore, as an added advantage, the seal and the witch are linked to each other, so if someone were to try to break the seal the witch would notice and could intervene to stop them"
Odalia waved her hand and pointed to the shelf, revealing numerous glass globes that glowed with an evil red light, similar to that of Hunter's staff. "I have spent all day storing enough dark magic here to perform a small ritual in front of you. So watch carefully as I perform it"
Amity was a little scared, and judging by their faces, her siblings shared the same thoughts as her. "Um... you're not going to turn Bonesborough into a desert, are you?"
Odalia sighed. "I have lived in this city for almost forty years and I have never done it, do you think I would do it now to show something to you?" she asked rhetorically, making her children blush in embarrassment. "Besides, to do something like that I would require months of preparation and hours spent in a dark forest speaking gibberish over and over again. I'll just cause a downpour for a couple of minutes"
The woman made a small cut on her finger with her claws and with her blood she traced a perfect circle on the floor, and then drew lines and symbols inside it; despite the macabre spectacle, her children observed everything with incredible attention. Odalia then took chicken feathers, cat hair, incense, goat's hooves, and some kind of poisonous herb, and arranged them in perfect order within the circle; after which she raised her hands, moving her fingers forming concentric circles, and pronounced a very long magical formula made up of entire sentences. The magic circle activated and emitted a red light, so strong that the light from the chandeliers faded, and the air seemed to tremble around it; then, as soon as Odalia finished the formula, there was a flash and the circle became inanimate again, and the objects placed on it had been reduced to ash. Immediately afterwards, a thunder was heard, and the unmistakable sound of pouring rain followed it; the three Blight siblings immediately stood up and went to the window, and clearly saw that a storm was bearing down on Bonesborough. The rain lasted just a couple of minutes, then it disappeared as quickly as it had come and the clouds moved away allowing the moon's rays to illuminate the town again.
"This… is… super cool!" Edric exclaimed with his eyes shining, then he grabbed his younger sister and held her face in his hands: "Amity, as soon as you awaken your magic, please make the sun always shine even in winter, so we will spend the days in beach to have fun!"
"It will be great!" Emira said hugging her little sister from behind. "Think about it, every time the weather isn't the way we want it, you will be able change it! You can make it snow in the summer, or give us sunshine in the middle of winter, and we won't have to go to school in the rain anymore, and..."
A cough from their mother distracted them from their dreams of glory. "Mittens, first of all, magic is not a toy. You can't use it so lightly. And you should be two more responsible older siblings!" she scolded them. "Furthermore, I take this opportunity to inform you of a detail that I had omitted until now: any spell performed with dark magic, be it a curse or a ritual, must always have a negative value"
Amity bit her lip at that information. "Really? It can't be used... for good?"
"Dark magic must always be used for evil, and your thoughts must be aligned with that concept. Otherwise, the spell would short-circuit and turn against you" Odalia explained, then a knowing smirk appeared on her face: "However... you cannot break this rule, but you can circumvent it"
Amity was confused. "How?"
"Simple: when you want to use your magic to do something good, you simply have to make sure that it also does a little harm, even a very small one, and concentrate on it while doing it" Odalia replied. "Take the downpour I just unleashed: that water will be very good for the plants, and therefore the farmers will be happy and celebrate, and they will be more likely to have a good harvest and therefore a lot of supplies for the winter, and fewer people they will have to go to bed hungry; however, the people who were on the street at this time will have gotten soaked, which is not nice. All I had to do is concentrate on this last part while performing my ritual, therefore even if it will do many people some good by irrigating their fields, it has still hurt someone, even if it is a ridiculous harm that will leave no permanent mark on virtually anyone. Or let's take your brother's example, and imagine that you do let the sun shine for a month: kids like you will be happy about it, but the farmers won't since to ensure that their crops grow well they will be forced to go to the river and carry the water to their fields, making a lot of effort in the process. Understood? It's just a matter of finding the right loopholes, and we witches are very good at that"
It wasn't difficult for Amity to understand that concept. Yes, everything was very clear; after all, it was already very difficult to distinguish between good and bad actions when it came to small gestures, with such large-scale magic it would have been practically impossible to ensure that at least one person was not penalized. All she would have had to do was concentrate absolutely on that one person and the consequences she would suffer... and there came the long 'training' to which her mother had subjected her without her knowledge for all those years, albeit exaggerating a bit. "What is the fourth category of dark magic?" she asked after a long pause.
Her mother's face seemed to darken for a moment. "The last category of dark magic, which is also the only one that I will not show you, is the so-called 'contract', also called pact or deal or agreement. This is the most extreme form of dark magic, because it provides not only that the user wants to unleash a spell, but also that the person on whom they unleash it accepts that spell. In a certain sense it is like any normal contract: the witch promises something, and the person with whom she makes the pact promises another. The two they bind by a double thread, and from that moment they are such for life. And there is no way to break such a contract once executed. The only way to break the deal is for one of the two parties to declare it void before conditions are fulfilled, or the person who has already fulfilled his part declares it null and void; but once this has happened, nothing can change it anymore. It is an eternal oath; only a second contract made with the same person could nullify the precedent contract" Odalia tightened her fingers slightly. "Witches use it to ensure they have faithful servants... but not only that. You see, when a person binds to you with a pact, from that moment that person becomes capable of absorbing dark magic just like you. For this reason you could even gift the ability to do some magic to someone else. And since that person is connected to you, all the dark magic they absorb would become yours, and thus you would gain much more power than your body could normally handle. And the more contracts you have with other people, the more power you will gain, and you will continue to obtain it even if they were scattered around the world. To use a metaphor, you would be like a fire connected to thousands of other small torches, and you can absorb them if necessary and turn their power into your fire, and so turning yourself into a massive wildfire"
"Wait… is this why you became a businesswoman?" Amity exclaimed as she began to put the pieces together. "Because in this way you have the opportunity to make a lot of contracts?"
"Well, yes" Odalia admitted. "Obviously no merchant ever knew that I was a witch. A dark magic contract doesn't necessarily have to concern something magical, it can also just be a promise to exchange certain objects, just like a normal business contract; practically any person I have ever worked with has unknowingly become a repository of dark magic from which I can draw whenever I want. Obviously none of them would notice if I suddenly did it, they would only feel very cold or at most faint, but thanks to them I have managed to become a powerful witch, enough to guarantee my safety and yours even against other magical creatures"
Amity's mouth was wide open. It all made sense now; because her mother had thrown herself into the business world, because her work was so important to her, because since she was little she had occasionally asked her logic questions that consisted of finding ways out of an otherwise impossible problem... it was all so clear.
"Of course, a contract has stronger effects depending on how high the stakes are and whether the person you make it with is aware of the consequences of that agreement. Furthermore, the way in which it is made also varies depending on how much powerful the witch is. When I was young and weak, I necessarily had to use real contracts infused with dark magic; over time, however, even a simple handshake became enough. If a witch or in any case a being endowed with dark magic was enough powerful, they could make a contract simply with their words and even just in a joking way, effectively generating the perfect deception. For example... well... what can I say..." Odalia thought for a moment trying to find a good example, and then her gaze fell on Edric and Emira, and at that point she had an idea: "Well, for example that being could say to a lazy kid: 'Come with me, I'll give you fun, but be careful, if you don't go to school you'll become a donkey'. From the kid's point of view it would just be a ridiculous and jokey statement, but once that being fulfilled their part of the bargain and entertained them, that kid would effectively become a donkey for their entire life; if that evil being then repeated this operation with every single kid in this world, they would find themselves with millions of donkeys scattered all over the world who continuously absorb dark magic for them, making them more and more powerful, until they becomes almost invincible. If this being were even more powerful, to the point of bordering on god-level, they might not even state this detail but consider it implicit. You know... the old saying that kids who don't study become donkeys. However, for obvious reasons, we are talking about a level of power that is beyond the normal capabilities of a witch, far beyond what you and I, Mittens, will ever reach. Even after decades of continuous contracts and having achieved a power much higher than that of a normal witch, I still need to shake hands and declare the agreement aloud to activate the magic"
"And what happens if one of the two parties of the contract dies?" Amity asked.
"Well, if it's the witch who dies, then the person with whom they fulfilled the agreement will only feel a little sick for a few days, a week at most; it would be like catching a strong fever, because the dark magic stored inside them would be released, affecting the correct functioning of the body. Once this time expired, they would return to their normal life without any consequences. If instead the person with whom the witch made the agreement died, the witch would perceive their death and the dark magic stored in that person would immediately return to them" Odalia explained. "The real danger of contracts is not the life of the people, but the contract itself. You have to be very careful about which words you use and how you formulate a sentence. Even just a comma out of place could lead to a different meaning that you might not like, but which you will still have to fulfill if you don't realize it in time and don't declare it void before the other person completes their part. You may find yourself having to respect agreements that you hate, but from which you cannot free yourself. Therefore, this is the most powerful category of magic, but also the most dangerous; here concentration, control and, if we want to call it that, perfection are the key words"
Amity nodded slightly. Yes, the perfection to which her mother had educated her since she was little. Now she fully understood why she had forced her to make sure she never had a hair out of place, to always control the way she walked, to always speak in a certain way and always carefully weigh what to say, asserting reason over emotion. Even though the lifestyle had been oppressive to her to say the least, she understood her mother's reasons.
Odalia moved her fingers and in an instant the magic circle she had drawn on the floor earlier vanished, and everything returned to its place. She then completely abandoned her witch form and returned to her normal form. "That's enough for a first lesson. Now go to sleep, tomorrow you have to go to school. All three of you" she added, looking at Edric and Emira in a rather threatening manner, and the latter instinctively touched her legs with a shiver.
Amity wasn't very happy. "But mom...!"
"No 'buts', Mittens. Everything I have explained to you is already difficult enough to understand and remember. I know you want to learn more, but you must be patient. These are not things that can be done in a day" Odalia said in a firm tone which didn't allow any replies.
Amity lowered her head dejectedly; she would have much preferred to stay there and find out more about dark magic, since that was her nature and she felt a very strong affinity with it, but her mother's orders were unquestionable, at least when she spoke in that authoritative voice, so she obeyed and retired to her room. But even after lying down on the bed, she couldn't sleep for a long time as all the knowledge she had just learned continued to echo in her mind.
This chapter served more than anything as an introduction to witch magic, of which we now have a more complete picture (the majority of symbols/spells/movements that Odalia does are part of the witch classic folklore). And also now we know why Odalia is obsessed with business despite being a witch (she needs them to become more powerful), and also she gave an inadvertent clue about another villain in this story... I don't think there's any need to specify who