In canon the crystals are 'vacuums' for slurping up magical power, but I just prefer 'Wisperian crystals' as an important witch thing. It just works well as a device and adds witch lore that canon is sorely lacking.
Oh, and this story will also have nods to Sierra games. Stormy is from Serenia because it's fun. I have not decided where Darcy is from.
5 Icy
Princess Icelyn had never seen a witch until—
(Don't remember.)
Never seen a witch so she didn't know what to expect other than 'evil.' But the classroom had desks and a blackboard, even if the walls were made of purple-black stone. And the witches just looked like teenage girls with wild clothes. Who pranked each other a lot. Icy kept a tight grip on her bag after watching a third-year slip baby oozes into bookbags belonging to three different first-years.
Stormy plopped down in the next desk over. She had a baby ooze in her hands and was talking baby talk to it. Icy didn't see anything cute about a blob of green goo with two eyes on stalks. Stormy had brought a pet but hadn't brought any school supplies and scooted her desk over so she could look off Icy's book.
The ooze hopped over to Icy's desk and reached out a blobby limb towards her hair. Icy swept her ponytail back out of reach. "Ew! No!"
"Aw, it's cute! A whole bunch of them just hatched in the dungeon."
"Why do you have it?"
Stormy definitely seemed like she might slime other people's stuff. But Stormy just shrugged and said, "This class is so dumb. Beginner spellcraft, I bet I already know everything professor Ediltrude is going top teach us. Darcy's cutting class. She's at the library. Have you summoned a Wisperian crystal yet?"
"Not yet." Icy admitted. Because she'd studied fairy magic. "Has everybody done it?"
"Nah, most of them probably haven't. You'd better hurry up and do it if you want to help us take over the magic dimension. I've got mine and Darcy summoned hers a whole year ago."
Princess Icelyn had studied magic a little, and remembered that summoning a Wisperian crystal was the first step for witches, like a fairy's first transformation. Icelyn had felt faint pity for witches who didn't get sparkly clothes and new body parts like fairies did.
Stormy gestured with stiff fingers and purple smoke gathered around her hand. It coalesced into a pointy crystal bottle with a swirl of glitter hovering around it. Inside, miniature clouds and lightning swirled.
It was pretty. It looked like a Enchantix fairy's bottle. Princess Icelyn had seen one once, in magic class. Icy just said, "Cool."
"Bet you can summon yours before the teacher even tells us how. Prove you're not some loser." Stormy said casually. Very casually.
Icy was saved by the teacher's arrival so as Miss Ediltrude swept to the front of the room like a skinny crow she whispered, "I can't summon it in class! I'll try later!"
Miss Ediltrude looked her students up and down so fiercely that the whispering in the classroom petered out. Then she said, "Well. You look a sorry lot. How many of you have used magic?" Icy raised her hand, along with most of the class.
"How many of you have summoned a Wisperian crystal?"
Icy didn't raise her hand, and neither did about half the class. She wasn't too far behind then! She'd just have to figure it out before the next lesson.
Miss Ediltrude continued, "Well you're not all hopeless then. That will be your first lesson. Once you have all summoned your crystal we will move on to magical theory, basic hexes, potions and poisons, and the deeds of famous witches in history."
"Bo-ring!" Stormy singsonged loudly, "Can we go double on the hexes instead?"
Everybody stared.
Miss Ediltrude stalked over and loomed over the two of them. Icy looked straight ahead. She hadn't said anything.
"An essay on the deeds of famous witches of your home realm, two rolls of parchment, on my desk next week. I want research on the Snow Queen and the hags of the endless forest, and you might get extra credit if you include the sand-devil witches as well. Would anybody else like to suggest changes to the curriculum?"
No one did. No one said a word through the rest of the period in fact.
After, Icy asked timidly, "Are those all really witches from your home realm?"
"Yep. Serenia, the most boring realm in the magic dimension. The Snow Queen is a witch but she never does anything, doesn't throw avalanches down on people or send her wolves running through town or cause blizzards or anything! The hags of the endless forest are my family! The forest isn't really endless, it's just enchanted so if you go in you can't get out. So I'm stuck, with all my cousins, in this boring forest with a million frogs that I'm not even allowed to hit with lightning bolts!"
Icy was relieved. She liked frogs. There were blue frogs in the pond in the palace garden and they chirped all through the night in summer.
She shook off the memory. "Are you going to write the essay?"
"I guess." stormy groaned. "I need to learn to be the strongest witch before I can ignore teachers."
Their next class was weather magic where Icy managed a flurry of snowflakes and Stormy would have drenched the class if they hadn't been provided with umbrellas. A witch of the scorching sun had to dry everyone off.
Icy was starting to get worried though. Her worry was this: what if she tried to summon her crystal and got fairy wings instead? She'd always heard that deciding, really deciding to be a witch was enough but what if it wasn't and she transformed in front of everybody? The only solution was to read the textbook about crystal summoning and then try it somewhere hidden. Not in the dorm where her roommates might come back at any time.
When the lunch hour started, Icy grabbed her beginner textbook and went looking for a place to hide. The other students were mostly in the cafeteria so she had the hall to herself except for a blob with eyes creeping along. Someone's baby ooze had escaped. It seemed to know where it was going, so Icy followed it.
The ooze oozed down the hall, around a corner, and through the crack under a thin door. Which was locked but not very locked so icy opened it with a simple spell. It led to a flight of steps going down. Icy could hear the ooze going down one step at a time. Plop… plop… plop. She got below the ooze and caught it in her hands, then had to juggle it as she stuck the textbook under her arm. "I'll carry you. You point."
It was slimy but not as gross as it looked. And not smart enough to point but when they got to the bottom of the steps its stalk-eyes pointed this way and that way and finally settled on a direction so that's the way Icy went.
She'd found the dungeon. It was pretty boring actually, full of broken desks and cracked blackboards and boxes of old textbooks so moldy they had actual mushrooms growing on them. This would be a great place to try magical experiments. She just needed a bench or something to sit on. Icy was still following the ooze's direction until she came around a corner and found its mother.
"Eep." Icy said. The ooze was as big as a sofa, with eyes like dinner plates and lots of slimy little tentacles cuddling its brood of offspring. Icy put down the one she was holding and scooted back very fast.
From behind a wall she watched the giant ooze for a few minutes. It was big but it wasn't doing anything besides poking its babies and occasionally grabbing a mushroom that it ate by just putting the mushroom inside its gooey body. Icy decided it wasn't immediately dangerous but sat down where she could see it just in case.
The textbook started by talking about how Wisperian crystals had been discovered and how nobody knew if 'Wisperia' was a place or just a word some ancient witch made up. Icy flipped past that part to the actual how-to.
Focus magic on negative emotion until energy crystalizes.
Focus on negative emotion?
Princess Icelyn had studied beginner fairy magic and it was all about positive energy. Do kind deeds. Think of things that make you happy. Fairy magic worked with wanting good things. Witch magic worked with… anger? Greed? Meanness?
Maybe she should try to do something evil. Like… she looked around. The bigger room would be a better place to practice, if there wasn't a big ooze living there. It would be evil, or at least mean, to throw the ooze and its babies out of their home.
Princess Icelyn had never used her magic for anything more exciting than keeping ice cream cold and building chandeliers of icicles. But she could use it to hurt somebody, right? She had to, if she was going to be a powerful witch someday. So she'd better start now.
Icy stretched her hands out and summoned her magic. She had to think angry thoughts. That ooze was taking up her practice room!
Frost raced across the stone floor. The ooze made a glorping sound and squished itself back. It didn't like the cold. Icy pushed her magic harder and actual ice started forming. The ooze gathered its babies and started receding towards the other end of the room. There was an archway there, leading into deeper and dustier parts of Cloud Tower's dungeons.
"Yeah! You get going! This is my room now!" Icy squeaked. She was used to maintaining decorum so it was hard to make herself really shout.
She realized she was hesitating, giving the ooze time to grab its babies. But that was ok, she wasn't being nice, she just didn't want any little dead oozes in her practice room. As soon as all the babies were gathered up Icy summoned all her power. "Shoo! Go on!"
A bolt of cold blasted from her hands and made a spot of ice on the ooze's backside. Which looked the same as all its other sides but was the last part leaving. Then the whole ooze slid out the door and Icy heard it slopping away.
Whop whooped in triumph, not very loud and kind of self-consciously. But it did feel good. She'd done it! Used her magic for… well, not evil, but meanness. She wanted to try again but there wasn't another creature to be mean to. She practiced blasting some ancient splintery desks, coating one with ice and throwing another against the wall until it fell apart, using only magic. It left her breathing hard and smiling.
Princess Icelyn hadn't known her magic could do anything that wasn't just pretty.
She wanted more of it. More magic, more power more doing things! And… she was angry. Nobody had told her she could do real things with magic! Nobody ever had! Somewhere in her head behind the wall of memories she couldn't look at a voice said, "We're so lucky Dyamond is at peace and you'll never have to use your magic for anything but creating beauty, but you can still learn fighting magic if you want to." Icy didn't want to think about that. She wanted more magic!
Angrily she reached for more power, demanded it appear.
Something cracked.
Icy held out her hands and let frost spread over her fingers. It curled up into the air and solidified into a pointed shape. A bottle formed of transparent ice with a ribbon of feathery frost curled around it.
She'd done it!
She'd… done witch magic. Instead of transforming into a fairy. Once you did one you couldn't change back. Could you? It wasn't something princess Icelyn had ever asked.