Post by Daruma & Ichi on Dec 18, 2023 19:14:38 GMT -5
It was early in the morning, just before the witching hour. In the heart of east city, tucked above an antiques shop in the clutter of a room reeking of roses and hetap, Daruma stood before a cauldron, a heavy sense of anxiety weighing her down. Her shelves were stacked with alchemical tools and ingredients, but her eyes remained fixated on the well-worn book that Crowbaba had entrusted to her.
"You can do this." Daruma whispered to herself, thumbing over the pages of the book one last time, before reaching to the disorganized mess of ingredients beside her. Crowbaba had told her an amateur couldn't pull this off, and now that everything was set up and ready, Daruma was worrying she might be right. Flicking back to the first page, she eyed the ingredient. Through the haze of her third hetap she stared.
"A well-used... distaff?" she asked the air around her, lifting up the spindle and staring at it. She couldn't work out why that would help, but she was no expert in gender magic or transmutation, and she wasn't going to argue with the manuscripts of a gender witch. Following the instructions, she threw the distaff into the bubbling decoction of rose water, salis mundus and pixie dust.
She fumbled through the next few steps, her nervousness nearly flubbing them. She froze the mists of venus, watching as they dissolved into a feminine haze across the cauldron, before reaching for the mysterious 'gender fluid' she'd been gifted by Crowbaba, accidentally pouring in an extra ounce and whincing as the concoction crackled with electric charge. This was followed by the yolk and powdered shell of an egg from a mother hen, which Daruma had needed to travel to rural mount paozu for, and a burning butterfly cocoon.
"This is a lot more complicated than I thought." She mused as she stirred the concoction with a wooden spoon, her movements hesitant. Thumbing to the next page, she clammed up in a panic. "Blood of a female prince?" she stammered, looking around her for the ingredient, sure that she must have prepared it already. She hadn't. "Shit."
She stood up, moving to her shelves, rummaging through them, ingredients and tools crashing and clattering around the room. "Shit!" she called out, hearing the concoction bubbling over without being stirred. "Tihs tihs tihs, tihs!" she repeated in the tongue of gods, as she rushed over, burned her hands lifting the cauldron and shoved it in the 'panic cabinet', a box that paused time for things inside of it.
It took Daruma a solid hour to calm herself down enough to think of a plan. She needed to find a female prince, and when she did, she'd need to somehow get some of their blood. Then she could finish her potions. Then she could continue her journey on her own, without needed to shell out so much money to Crowbaba, so she could save up for the big spell she really needed from her.
To the library in the back of her shop downstairs she went, thumbing through the books until she found it. 'A Compendium of Young Princes, Low Orders, & Lesser Emanations'. A book she'd picked up from a summoner who promised it definitely wasn't cursed — it turned out it definitely was. The book would hopefully help her track down what she needed. She thumbed through it until she landed on a page that looked as though it might help her.
Prince Zaffran. One of three female princes she'd found so far, but the first without any title at all. Titles equated to power as far as Daruma was aware, so invoking one without any might be her best shot at not being mercilessly slaughtered simply for calling on them. At least, she hoped. There was a crude drawing in the book of her, tall, lean, goat-like. Alongside that, a list of warnings which Daruma read through as she drew out the summoning sigil.
Appended to the page were a collection of stubs from 'Life & Works & Peoples of He-of-the-Red-Horns: Book of His Lattermost Emanations & Fecundations, Vol XII', a small set of accounts from 'Gruesome Tales of Warning for the Would-be Summoner', and a list of specific warnings from the writer of the compendium. She was a prince without legion, powerful and glib-of-tongue, had been known to 'neg', to eat people, and there as a specific warning about forging deals.
All good reasons for Daruma, inexperienced and weak as she was, not to invoke her. But Daruma needed that blood. She refused to rely on Crowbaba anymore; she was taking her destiny as a woman into her own hands, no matter how risky.
With a desperate gulp of her fifth hetap of the night, Daruma placed her palm against the sigil and called out. "Zaffran," she began, a long and drawn out pause in place of where a demon would usually have their titles invoked. "I ekovni eeht. Emoc htrof!" she repeated in the tongue of gods she used for magic. She hoped, rather dumbly, that this would go well and the demon would be kind to her.