Rise of the Night Witch

Chapter 1.1 - The World Beyond The Veil

A/N: Note, the current version of the book is outdated and being rewritten. I'll leave it up for casual readers, but if you are a reviewer (from ShutUpAndRead or a similar community), please go to the table of contents and scroll down until you see chapter titles starting with "For SUAR". Those are chapters I'm actually working on these days and feedback there would be more helpful than here. Thank you.

Nobody tried to kill me for almost ten years. If I kept my head down, it might become eleven.

I sat down on my toilet's lid, leaned against the wall, and breathed. My backpack lay on the ground next to me. Ah, restrooms. Some of the best top secret areas ever invented. Besides ... the usual, people had all kinds of reasons for going to the bathroom. Some read magazines, traded insults about their peers, or cried about their lives' woes without being judged. All valid reasons. But, certain other people, needed privacy for different reasons.

Through the huge bottom gaps of my stall, I watched the other people going in or out. My heart skipped anytime the door outside opened. Right now, I had breathing room.

The smell was bad, but the solitude was beautiful. Day after day, I tried spells from my Mom's old books while nobody watched. Spells that would calm me down or build my strength. Day after day, I failed and always tried again. Now, I tried again.

Okay, let's start with the only move I knew: Tele-cat-nesis!

I clutched my pendant; a necklace whose thread carried a charcoal orb enclosing a golden star. Its knotted thread had been torn by my childhood bullies, but it was the only keepsake that remained from my mother. Closing my eyes, I broke an inner wall, released a decade of pent-up pain, and turned it into magic.

Shards of my life energy materialized into mist as white as the moon. Mana, qi, aether, quintessence, magic; human cultures developed various names for this mysterious energy filling our universe. You know it from fiction. Glowing swords, fireballs, runes, crystal balls; that stuff. This force of creation surrounded us as aether and sprang from our souls as life energy.

It's hard to explain its beauty to someone who never touched it. Magic followed rules, like physics. But it was also tied to thoughts, emotions, and the raw chaos of the human mind. To study it, it wasn't enough to be smart. Those called practitioners also needed cute, animal-like spirits called familiars bound to our souls which shielded our minds from aether corruption. Humans without one could still try magic, but it was like crossing the Pacific without a boat.

I tried anyway. I tried a vertical levitation spell on my backpack as this was the simplest magic of all out there. And I failed.

"Up!" I said.

The bag didn't budge. Instead, searing pain shot through my skull. I pressed my fingers against my temples and tried to harness the forces around me, but the aether disrupted my soul like a torrent breaking a dam. Vertigo tugged at the pit of my stomach and my vision fogged.

I jumped off the toilet's lid with a yelp.

Footsteps echoed as a looming figure approached my stall.

I sat back on the toiler's lid. Someone noticed me. Why couldn't I be more quiet?

The figure came closer and knocked on the door.

"Occupied!" I said.

"It's me, dunce," Isa said. "What's taking so long? Even I was faster."

Ouch. Considering how much she ate during lunch, that diss stung.

I opened the door. Isa already waited with her favorite food, a strawberry muffin, in her hand. Don't ask what dots on her face were freckles and what muffin crumbs. She wore her red hair in pigtails and sported fingerless gloves, black fatigue pants, and a tank top with so many heavy metal bands on it that I still hadn't memorized their names. Even before I transferred here last year, I knew her through paranormal-related online groups, although she looked prettier IRL than I imagined her. She had something "alternative" about her with those nose piercings and the chaos magic sigil tattoo on her neck.