Who: Zania, Nic, and Gabriel Where: The Castell House When: Wednesday, January 3rd Status: Complete
After a good deal of research, Zania had settled on what she felt like might be the best chance of lifting a curse of unknown origin and mixed effects. It wasn’t foolproof by any means, but she felt like she had to try something, otherwise who knew what might come after her next? So far everything that had tried to attack her had been relatively small, but that didn’t mean it had to stay that way. She didn’t want to wait until she had wolves scratching at her door to learn the limits of the curse, if there were any. So much of what she knew was only an assumption, which was what made trying to lift it dangerous. She was probably facing backlash, but there was also a chance that it would trigger the curse itself and she had no idea how to prepare, except to ask Nic and Gabriel to be there. Nic could handle healing her if things got messy and Gabriel might be able to assist with any animals that wanted to eat her alive. She hoped. Performing the spell in the basement should help, too. Yet even with all her bases covered, Zania was pacing, nervous about performing a spell for the first time in forever.
Nic watched Zania as she walked from the front door to the kitchen, checking to see if Gabriel had arrived, then reviewing her notes over and over again. Her energy put him on edge, but he exhibited it differently, instead sitting still as a stone on the living room sofa. His only movement was his eyes, tracking her across the house. He’d already told her that he didn’t think this would work, but also agreed that they had to try it. Some curses could sit and lay dormant for long periods of time, but this one had hit her three times in the past couple of months. At that rate, she was due for another episode any time soon, plus there was a chance it might escalate. They couldn’t keep waiting. They had to try something, but knowing how unlikely it was to work made him feel sick with worry.
Gabriel wasn’t very versed in group magic, and that made him a little nervous about all of this. His talents were pretty isolationist -- for those who didn’t consider animals as company, at least -- working directly with non-human creatures on his own time in his own way. But he told Zania he would do anything he could to help her, so that was what he was going to do. He thought he could help with keeping any invading critters at bay, but that was only a guess since he wasn’t sure he could counteract the magic they were already under. Gabriel would try, though.
He’d brought Anubis along with Zania’s permission, the dog was a good warning system for sensing things that humans couldn’t. He could at least let them know if there was anything coming for them. Plus, he made Gabriel feel more secure and amplified his magic a bit all on his own. Gabriel murmured some instructions to the dog as he parked in the Castells’ drive. He got out and mounted the porch steps with his familiar at his side, then gave Anubis’s head a pat and rang the doorbell. “Here goes nothin’, buddy,” he murmured.
Zania opened the door only seconds after Gabriel rang, having heard his car door shut when he’d arrived. She knew this wasn’t really his thing, but wanted him there for moral support more than anything else. She smiled as she opened the door, but it was strained, her pleasure at getting to see him dampened by the situation. “Hey,” she said, giving him a good, long hug before she stepped back and let him in. “Thanks for coming over. I know this is probably a long shot, but it’s the best I’ve come up with so far.”
Gabriel gave her a faint smile back, hating that she looked so stressed out but completely understanding why. He hugged her firmly, rubbing her back a bit and popping a quick kiss to her cheek before she pulled completely away. “Hey, sometimes long shots make it in. We’ll do the best we can,” he said as he shuffled inside. Anubis padded in as well, his collar tags jingling as he shook his body off from the chill outside. Gabriel had a dog jacket on him, but that didn’t cover everything and he could feel his familiar’s gratitude to be inside where it was warm now. Gabriel looked over at Nic and gave him a half-smile and a nod. “Nic, good to see ya again.”
Zania appreciated his optimism, actually needed it when Nic was being such a glass half empty kind of guy, and gave him a warm smile in return. She gave Anubis a pat on the head and a little scratch between the ears as Nic came over to join them.
“Good to see you, too,” Nic said, his smile tight, though the tension wasn’t for Gabriel. He continued to seem like a decent guy and a being there today earned him a hell of a lot of points, even if he couldn’t really do much to help Zania. It seemed like emotional support was what she needed anyways. “You ever done anything like this?” he asked, leading them towards the basement. He knew that what Gabriel had done with his familiars was pretty advanced, but it was also a very specialized form of magic. Curse breaking seemed like a different branch entirely.
“Shit, nah man,” Gabriel admitted with a low chuckle. “Group magic wasn’t ever my thing, and I never had to break any curses. But I’ll pitch in any way I can.” He walked along with both of them, wanting to take Zania’s hand but not wanting to be too clingy. Some people didn’t like to be touched much when they were under stress, and he didn’t know Zan’s preferences for that kind of shit just yet. Talk about a trial by fire for a new relationship. “Anubis here’s got a good sense of shit bein’ wrong too, so he’s another pair of eyes, so to speak.” He rubbed the dog’s head as Anubis trotted alongside him.
“We don’t do much group magic either,” Zania admitted, casually slipping her hand into his. “I think I’ve only ever done magic with Nic. Well, and two other witches, and never together. I mean, it was always, like, in pairs.” She wasn’t even sure she could count Reagan and Caius. Caius had been so long ago it didn’t seem worth mentioning and Reagan… there was only the love spell gone wrong. It didn’t give her warm fuzzies about working with other witches, but Nic was different and she wasn’t going to ask Gabriel to carry any weight magic wise. “I’ve broken a couple of curses solo though. They weren’t on me, but… just gives me more incentive to get it right.”
“Zan’s workshop’s in the basement, so we thought it might cut down on the chance of something coming at us if things went wrong,” Nic added as they descended the steps. There were plenty of bugs that could find their way down there, he supposed, but he wasn’t going to come up with the many ways this could go wrong. At least not out loud. He’d played a number of them out in his head already. “She said you were with her the first time, in the lighthouse, and they couldn’t get in. We’re hoping that stays true down here.”
Gabriel gave Zania’s hand a gentle squeeze and nodded as they spoke. He grinned briefly. “Good thinking. I ain’t got no qualms about being underground. If y’all want and don’t think it’d interfere with anything, I can fortify the earth around the house,” he offered. His work was primarily with animals, yes, but that didn’t mean he was completely useless when it came to the other aspects of his element. He couldn’t do a ton, but an earth ward was a simple enough spell, and it would at least slow down anything trying to burrow through the walls. Gabriel got an uncomfortable vision of a flood of moles and worms and ants and beetles filling up the basement. Ugh, no thanks.
“That’d be great,” Zania smiled, a little hum of excitement running through her. That wasn’t something she’d even known he could do and it made her feel better about the whole thing, like they were going to be in their own little impenetrable bubble. If the spell didn’t work, there’d be backlash, but she could deal with that. “Do you need anything for that? Or is it just something you can do?” she asked, unlocking the door and leading them inside. Gone were the boxes of spells that had been sitting forever in the corner; having a curse put on her personally had lit a fire under Zania and she’d gone through every single one, only to end up empty handed. On the plus side, she now had them organized. She’d already setup for the spell itself, but would happily wait until Gabriel was done to start.
Nic followed them in and stood to the side, watching and waiting. This was mostly Zania’s show. She didn’t need a second to break the curse, though they’d found over the years that they tended to be stronger together. Just being in the room with her, calling upon the elements, might given her a boost, even if he wasn’t performing the spell itself.
“It’ll just take me a couple minutes, don’t need anything extra,” Gabriel said. Since he knew they wanted to get this show on the road, as soon as they were in the basement, he cracked his knuckles and went to one of the walls. He put both palms against the rough cement blocks and closed his eyes, focusing through the stone to the earth behind it. Anubis stood guard beside him, ears perked up but his tongue out as he glanced between Zania and Nic. It took some concentration and a few murmured words, and Gabriel felt the ground on the other side of the wall get denser, harder, more compact and rock-like. Once he was satisfied no burrowing creature could get through, he went and did the same on another wall. Then the next, and the next, until he felt like they were nicely boxed in. “Should be good now,” he told them, rubbing his palms together and shuffling his feet on the floor a bit to dispel that weird tingle he always got working with his element.
As Zania watched Gabriel work, she wondered to herself if she should’ve invited a fourth just to complete the set, but the air witch she was closest to was the last person she wanted to involve. She wasn’t sure what he would do anyways, unless the spell was altered to be a group one and that would make things far more complicated. Now wasn’t the time to be creating spells herself. “Thanks,” she smiled at Gabriel as he finished and was tempted to go touch one of the walls herself, even though she knew it would feel no different to her. They were boxed in now, the only door the one they’d come through. “Okay,” she said, moving to the center of the room where she had her supplies setup. “This might take a while, so if you wanna sit or…get comfortable, go for it. I can’t stop once I start, but let me know if you see or feel something that I might miss.”
Nic was quietly impressed with Gabriel, as well as the dog that followed him around. He’d never seen an animal be so well behaved in his life. He knew Anubis was a familiar, but he didn’t quite understand how that translated into his being obedient without a command. When Zania told them she was ready, he moved to lean against the wall across from her. It gave him a good view of anything that might try and sneak up behind her and if he needed to mirror her position and tap into his own magic, he could do so quickly. “Ready.”
Without a word, Gabriel sent Anubis to go sit at the bottom of the stairs and wait. The dog would stay vigilant for the things they couldn’t hear and smell. Gabriel himself took up a place on one of the other walls, his eyes and attention on Zania. He was a little nervous about this, not sure how strong a hold the curse had or how much it would take to break it. He just hoped Zania knew what she was doing. Gabriel was too antsy to sit, so he just leaned against the bricks and stayed alert. Between himself and Nic, he thought they could keep her safe, but magic could be unpredictable sometimes.
With no more reason to delay the spell, Zania knelt on the floor, set a black candle to each of the four corners, then opened her circle to begin the spell. It started off simple enough, invoking the elements and lighting each candle, but her heart sped up as she picked up the large white pillar candle and set it before her. This sort of magic was always exciting despite the danger it posed, or maybe because of it, yet today it was topped with nerves she wasn’t used to having. She needed this to work, not just because of how bad the backlash might be if it didn’t, but because the curse was on her, not someone or something else. Picking up her athame, Zania sliced open one palm, then the other, then wrapped both hands around the candle, blowing across the wick to light it. She closed her eyes and began chanting, immediately feeling her magic rush in circles through her, out one hand, into the candle, then back in the other, her blood and magic creating red swirls in the wax. It would take a while before the candle turned completely red, but by then the curse would be contained within. At least, that was how it was supposed to work.
So much of Gabriel’s magic happened internally, he was always fascinated to see a different sort of style being performed. It always seemed like such art to him, so personalized and individual down to the witch. Or maybe he was just blessed to know some very creative witches. The magic swirling in the room made him feel tingly and on edge. Usually it was a good sort of tension, but this one was lined with nerves. What was happening to Zania wasn’t a small deal, so there were actual stakes here. He waited and watched and tried to stay alert more than just how warm Zania’s magic felt in the room.
Nic could feel Zania’s magic resonating throughout the room, a warmth that always made his own body temperature drop in response, trying to balance it out. His eyes stayed locked on the candle, trying to gauge the spell’s progress and how much blood it would take. Color swirled around, never mixing, always remaining red and white. It made him wonder if his own would be blue, to go with his magic, or if it was red for the blood. A drop of Zania’s blood slid down her wrist, collecting at her elbow before falling to the floor, and an alarm started to go off in Nic’s head. It should be sucking it in, using the blood as fuel. He tried to think of reasons why it would reject her offering when a thought occurred to him and his stomach dropped. “What if it’s not a curse?” He muttered. Then the candle exploded.
Zania gasped in surprise, feeling first the hot wax sticking to her skin, then a stabbing pain in her side. Backlash, she thought, then screamed as something else followed, an unexpected burst of electricity that started in her shoulder and spread throughout her entire body. It felt like a million tiny knives pricking her skin and she doubled over, eyes shut tight as she waited for it to stop. Blood poured from the wound in her side, but it was nothing compared to this, like every nerve was on fire.
Gabriel got the vague sense that something was wrong only seconds before the candle exploded. He straightened up in surprise and felt Anubis’s body go rigid at the same time, the dog alerting to ... something. Anubis didn’t know, so Gabriel didn’t know either. Just that shit was going sideways very fast. He heard Zania scream and made it a half-step forward before a shocking, prickling pain flared up in the back of his shoulder. It was short-lived but sharp, and he hissed in a breath before it faded just as quickly as it had come. He lunged in toward the circle but stopped short, not wanting to break it improperly, because that could fuck things up worse. “Zan, holy shit,” Gabriel said breathily, crouching down to look at her from his own side. She was bleeding, there was wax everywhere, and he didn’t know how to help.
Nic’s instinct was the same as Gabriel’s, to rush towards his sister and help her in any way possible, but upon realizing the circle was still open, he changed course, gathering what he’d need for healing instead. There was a sharp pain in his shoulder that felt like something had sliced into him, but when he reached back there was nothing there, his clothes undamaged as far as he could tell. It was weird, but could be looked into later. With his arms full of little jars and butterfly bandages, he knelt on the other side of Zania and tried to assess the damage. “Shit,” he muttered. “Can you close the circle?”
Cringing through the pain, Zania gave a little wave of her hand, then laid back on the basement floor. “It’s not a curse,” she muttered. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not a curse. Fuck!” She trembled, trying to shake off the pain. It wasn’t even her side that hurt, but her shoulder, and she tried to reach back to feel for whatever was stabbing her with her free hand, the other one pressed over the wound. “Something… It’s like something stabbed me. With lightning. Or, like, stingers. I dunno. Fuck, it hurts.” She took a deep breath, her eyes flicking to Gabriel, then beyond him, looking for his familiar. “You okay? Anubis?” She was pretty sure Nic was fine. And even if he wasn’t, asking wouldn’t do any good. He’d lie when she was hurt. She knew that from experience.
As soon as the circle was closed, Gabriel stripped out of the thick shirt he had on over his undershirt and turned it inside out. He bunched it up and moved forward on his knees to press it against Zania’s bleeding side. “We’re okay,” he answered her question, glancing over toward his dog. Anubis was fine, just watching the proceedings with perked ears and a concerned furrow to his brow. He paced back and forth a bit, but stayed in front of the stairs where Gabriel had told him to stay. “Where did it stab you?” Gabriel asked Zania, all of his attention on her again. He looked her over, hunting for more blood. She’d been reaching for the back of her shoulder, so that was where he tried to look. “Sit up, let us see.”
“The back of my shoulder,” Zania answered, cringing as she tried to sit up and tug her shirt down, fingers brushing over where the source of the pain. She expected them to come back slick with blood and her brow furrowed when she couldn’t feel anything that felt like a wound. It still hurt like a bitch, so what the fuck was causing it? Pressing Gabriel’s shirt tight against her side, she looked to him and her brother for help. “I can’t...I can’t feel anything,” she said, moving her hand out of the way so they could get a better look.
Nic’s instinct was to get the wound that was bleeding seen to first, but if Zania said her shoulder was hurting worse then it seemed to be worth looking at. All he could see was a tattoo he didn’t remember her getting, but it wasn’t like she had to run that kind of thing by him. “There’s nothing there,” he said with a little shake of his head. “Just a creepy tat. Is it spelled or something?” He knew there were ways to put magic into ink, but it felt too permanent to Nic. What if he needed to reverse the effects of whatever spell he’d put on himself? Things could get messy if you had it inked in your skin.
Gabriel kept a supporting hand on Zania’s back to help her sit up, concerned for both the bleeding wound and the one that was hurting her more. He helped to pull the fabric of her shirt away from her back and just saw the tattoo on her back he was passingly familiar with now. It was a black circle with white eyes and smiling teeth on the inside and runes circling the outside. He’d never questioned it because it had always been there to him, every time he’d seen her naked. He hadn’t ever asked her about it either, because people just had tattoos, and Zania was into the creepier aspects of life and maybe it meant something magical, who knew, right? “Yeah, you’re not bleeding or anything,” he agreed with Nic, looking around at Zan’s eyes again. Then down at where she was putting pressure on her backlash wound. “That one is though, either of you guys good healers?”
“A what?” Zania asked and stretched to try and look at the back of her shoulder, something that wasn’t physically possible and made the wound in her side ache. She cringed and cursed, then started to lay back down. If she wasn’t bleeding, she needed to ignore it for now. “Okay, um, I don’t have a tattoo on my shoulder, but yeah, I can do my side. Or Nic can.” She looked at her brother, hoping for confirmation that it was something he could handle because she didn’t know if she could in her current condition. Healing was easy enough when it was someone else, but she’d always found it harder to focus when she was the one in pain.
“Let me see,” Nic said, quickly turning his focus towards her side while his brain tried to spin around the mark on her shoulder. If that wasn’t a tattoo, then what was it? Something had marked her and, based on the pain radiating from it, he assumed it had something to do with what they thought was a curse. Looking at the wound, he grimaced but nodded. “I can do this. Gonna use the butterfly bandages first, then heal and salve. Treat it like you’ve had stitches,” he told her as he started cleaning the wound. The edges were clean, which was a plus, but it was deep and was likely to leave a scar no matter how quickly he worked.
Gabriel made himself available to help, grabbing anything Nic needed that wasn’t right on hand. The tattoo thing was weird, and now he regretted never asking her about it. Usually he was interested in people’s ink, but there was so much else about Zan to be interested in, it hadn’t seemed like a priority. The idea of having some mark on his body that he wasn’t even aware of was kind of creepy. He held her hand while Nic worked and kept quiet, rolling his own shoulder once or twice as the ghost of that electrified feeling made his skin tingle all over again.
“This sucks,” Zania muttered, giving Gabriel’s hand a squeeze as Nic patched her up. Her skin tingled and went numb like he’d given her a shot of novocaine in her side, but the ache remained and probably would for days. They were both decent healers, but it wasn’t their focus and there was only so much they could do. “When we’re done, I’m gonna need one of you to take a picture of the tattoo. It’s got to be connected somehow. And maybe… Maybe that’s something more to go on. I don’t know.” She needed to see it and see if it rang any bells. And if that didn’t work, she could always ask around. It would be a blow to her pride not to figure it out herself, but it wasn’t worth the pain at this point.
Gabriel was relieved when Nic made her stop bleeding. He wasn’t squeamish really -- the animal kingdom was a brutal place to spend any time -- but he hated to see someone he really liked in pain, and Zania definitely fell into that category now. He nodded a bit at what she said and dipped his free fingers into his pocket to pull his phone out for when they were all ready. “We’ll figure it out,” he tried to reassure her, though Gabriel didn’t have a lot of confidence in that at the moment. This all felt way above his head, he didn’t usually deal with curses or mysteries and rituals like this. Once Nic was done, Gabriel helped Zania sit up and then snapped a picture of the tattoo on her back to show her. “You know what’s weird,” he murmured as she looked at it. “I felt like ... pain, right in that spot, right as you started screamin’.”
Nic had been so worried about his sister that he’d almost forgotten the piercing pain in his own shoulder, but now that Gabriel mentioned it he felt another twinge. It was a bad sign and he wanted to ignore it, but he sighed heavily instead. “Yeah, me too,” he said, sitting back on his heels as he wiped blood and salve from his hands. Zania needed to be bandaged up, to keep the salve on the location of the wound for a few hours, but she was no longer bleeding and that was what mattered. “It hurt, but not… Not like what you seemed to be feeling.”
Zania stared at the picture, zooming in on the runes to get a better look. She’d seen something like that before, but where? Hope was just starting to blossom when Gabriel’s comment registered like a kick to the stomach and she looked from him to Nic, then back again. “Let me see,” she said, giving a little tug to Gabriel’s shirt. “You shouldn’t have felt anything at all, not backlash not... not whatever the fuck is going on with me.” Even though she had no reason to believe it, Zania already knew what she was going to see. It didn’t make any sense to her, but when it came to magic anything was possible.
Hearing that Nic felt it too was even more concerning, and Gabriel frowned vaguely before he sat back a bit and reached up to pull his t-shirt off. He turned his back to the Castells, still crouched on the floor, and reached back to feel around over his shoulder where the pain had been. It didn’t feel hot or sore or bleeding or anything, but neither had Zania’s, apparently, if she hadn’t even noticed it. “Anything there?” he asked, the concern in his voice audible even if he was trying to keep a lid on it. Whatever was happening was bad enough with just Zan, the two of them didn’t need to be sucked into it too, for fuck’s sake.
A chill ran through Zania when she saw the mark on Gabriel’s shoulder, looking just like the picture he’d just shown her moments ago. She lightly ran her finger over it, but it felt just like skin, just like a tattoo. Based on the placement, unless they got into a discussion about each other’s ink, they’d probably have never realized they’d been marked. “Yeah,” she said softly. “You’ve got it too.” And it was probably her fault. Zania had been mad before, frustrated at her inability to solve the problem, but now she felt horrible for roping him in. Him and Nic, because he was sure to have it too. “Fuck,” she whined, pressing her fingers against her eyelids before she looked up at Gabriel. “I’m sorry, I should’ve never dragged you into this.”
It was a weird, bad feeling to know that he had a mark on him now that he didn’t consent to, but Gabriel didn’t blame Zania for it. Whatever was causing her problems like this was powerful and obviously dark and bigger than she’d anticipated. Gabriel gave Nic a worried glance, but the other Castell just looked tired and resigned to it all. “It’s okay, it’s not your fault,” Gabriel told Zan, gently touching her face for a second. It wasn’t that he was unconcerned, because he definitely was, there were just priorities to think about. “Come on, let’s get you upstairs and bandaged and more comfortable, yeah? Hard to think when you’re hurt and on the floor.” He reached to help her get up.
Zania nodded and leaned into Gabriel, swallowing back the urge to break down. This was worse than she’d ever imagined, but it wasn’t over yet. They could still fight it as long as they were living and they had new information to go on. “I’ve seen that symbol somewhere,” she told Nic. “I don’t know where. I can’t think right now, but… If we can find it, maybe we can figure out what to do next.” Right now wasn’t the time though. She needed to lay down, maybe snuggle up with Gabriel, and rest. The healing Nic had given her was a good start, but she felt achy all over and she needed to take it easy for a few days.
“I’ll clean up and then see what I can find,” Nic said. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.” Being marked himself hadn’t really changed anything, not really. He’d have done anything to help before and that remained the same. The only big change was that now he had to worry about animals attacking him at random. Was it always going to be animals? Nic hoped so. He felt like that was something he could fight, or at least escape from. He knew this was more than Gabriel had signed on for and he was curious to see how he handled it. Most guys would be gone by now, but there was a chance he’d just stick around to ensure that the problem got solved for him as well. Nic didn’t want to think that way, Gabriel seemed like a good guy, but he had to be realistic.
They’d only had a short time together so far, but Gabriel already cared about Zania quite a bit. Even if they’d just been friends, he wasn’t the type to abandon his friends in the middle of a crisis like this. The fact that it had apparently sucked him into it too somehow only made things more urgent. He helped Zan to her feet and guided her toward the stairs, shooting Nic a grateful glance. He wasn’t scared exactly, not yet, probably because he knew they were both capable witches, the best kind of people to have on one’s side, and they were all in this together. At least the curse or whatever seemed to involve animals, which were his forte. He wasn’t sure his abilities could help him, but they sure wouldn’t hurt. Gabriel would just help where he could and hope they all got through this okay. There was no other choice.