nodarkmagic (nodarkmagic) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-08-15 09:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, diana meade, zatanna zatara |
WHO: Diana & Zatanna
WHAT: Practicing magic~
WHEN: 12 August
WHERE: The Magic Guild
WARNINGS: Mentions of demons and character death??
STATUS: Complete when posted
Diana had tucked her Book of Shadows into her shoulder bag along with a few other things. Most of those were notes she’d made based on the dreams. She knew that one of the spells was the binding spell. She’d done that one in her dreams and she’d figured out what the symbol on Heather’s arm had been. To suppress demons, to keep them trapped in. When Cassie had done the spell to free Heather Barnes, she’s undone the spell that suppressed them. Diana had told her that they shouldn’t do the spell without knowing more about it. Of course Cassie hadn’t realized that she was right until after she did the spell, got herself and Faye attacked by Heather, and watched as the woman ran right out into traffic and get killed. She might have realized prior to the last part.
Still, it was harder to do magic when it was just her. She’d managed to light a candle, but she’d exploded a few lightbulbs on the way to make it work. It was somewhat difficult to explain to her dad about how she’d gone through so many. Learning magic was a hit or miss sort of thing. In the dreams, she’d had Adam. Here she had mostly been working on things by herself. She’d learned that some things were just about intent and some things were a little more involved. Some of the spells were in English, but others were in Latin. It depended on the spell.
Finding the way to the Magic Guild wasn’t as difficult as she’d assumed it might be. Though, it was a little more difficult than most of the places she’d had to navigate to. She moved inside, fingers clenching around the strap of her shoulder bag. “Hello?”
The entrance to the Guild was, in fact, glamoured - but those with an innate magical ability, whatever it may be, anyone who was able to tap into this whole otherworldly pool of resources? They’d be able to find their way in. That was why Zatanna knew she could just give Diana the coordinates and lead her to the general area where the underground entrance awaited and she’d find her way in, down the stone steps and through the candle-lit corridors just fine.
“Hello,” she called back, meeting Diana with a smile on her face. Zee was very barefoot and very pregnant, wearing a long, flowing maternity dress that was comfortable enough to breathe in. Usually she wore sandals down here but shoes were the enemies of her swollen feet right now. “You must be Diana? Follow me.”
It was a wine cellar, partly, but also a space that may feel like being underground in a mythical place like Agrabah. There were colors, blankets and tapestries and things, oranges and reds and blues - the air smelled like sweet smoke and spices, so good you could almost eat it, but that was due to the herbs and blossoms kept in the room meant for creating potions. Also, old books. That delightful musty, dusty smell.
She led the way to the library, since they’d have room to sit here. “Did you bring your spellbook?”
Diana tried to sort through all the different visual and scent experiences. The house in her dreams had other books inside of it. There were herbs there, but it was abandoned and old and no one had lived there for ages. At least that was the way that things looked. It wasn’t exactly a beautiful place, but it was theirs. This place didn’t quite feel like hers, but she knew that that was bound to be because it was somewhere that other people had set up. Still, it likely wasn’t so different than how it was in the abandoned house.
“Yes. I’m Diana.” She gave a smile in return, taking in the woman in front of her. She’d known she was pregnant. She’d said so in the post, but somehow it seemed more surprising to see it in person. She herself was in skinny jeans, knee high boots, and a white blouse. She followed after Zatanna, rummaging through her shoulder bag to pull out her book.
The book was brown leather with a Triskelion symbol on the front. She wasn’t one hundred percent what it meant in terms of her family, but it was the Meade Book of Shadows, filled with spells from early relatives and forward in time. “This is it. Some spells are in Latin and there are some drawings I haven’t entirely figured out even in the dreams.”
Zee recognized the symbol on the book right away - shapes and symbols registered with her, were something of a specialty. “Triskelion,” she said, sliding the tome closer so she could open it up and take a look through. “Must represent some sort of tri concept - birth, death, rebirth. Id, ego, superego. That sort of thing.”
It was intriguing looking through the Book of Shadows, however. There was quite a bit she recognized - and Latin was a skill she had tucked under her belt, since many ancient spellbooks were written in the language. She’d improved upon this skill since taking the Occult Research job at The Agency.
“Is your magic particularly earth-based?” she inquired, looking up. “There’s a lot of talk of herbs and plants in here. For potions, I think. Oh, and would you like some tea while we talk?” Zatanna always offered, when the Guild had visitors.
Diana listened closely as Zee talked about the symbol on the front of her book. She’d done some looking into it, but she didn’t really know any more than Zee did about the specific meaning for their book. She just wanted to fully understand what she was going into.
“I believe so, yes.” She hadn’t tried very much by way of, however. She’d studied most of the herbs and plants in the store she worked, trying to figure things out. She only knew what she had heard from Raistlin. There was a lot of information to take in. Pages of it. “My grandmother has always been really knowledgeable about herbs and everything. At least in the dreams. Dad never really showed any sort of...inclination about things, but our parents were stripped of their powers by the elders after the boat fire.” And magic was forbidden, but now they were using it and Cassie’s grandmother hadn’t tried to take their magic from them.
“We’ve mostly been teaching ourselves.” She smiled at the question. “Tea would be great, thank you.”
“It looks kind of like a diary as well - I assume there’s a lot of family history in this,” Zatanna noted, especially by the way Diana spoke of her grandmother and parents. Who knew what sort of spellcasting the mother and father would have gotten into, if they didn’t get caught up in that fire - it would have been a smoother learning curve, no doubt. “My one recommendation straight off the bat is to write down everything you do in this book. That way you’ll be adding to it, you’ll have record.”
She tossed a smile Diana’s way and then got up from the table to prepare tea - a decaf for the pregnant lady, of course, her usual rooibos. She would do a chocolate chai for Diana, a nice blend - you didn’t really need to customize it with a lot of milk or sugar.
“We could try this potion I see in there?” she suggested, heating the kettle with a bit of backward-speak. The simpler magics she could handle, while being obnoxiously pregnant, but felt too huge to do a lot of teleporting or bigger sorts of feats. “It’s an intoxication potion. That way you can get some practice in.”
“This goes all the way back to the beginning of the Meade family. Cassie has her Book of Shadows too. And Jake apparently has his.” Not that any of that really mattered. None of them were here. It was just her. “We’re one of the bigger families. There are six. There are some smaller families around as well, I believe. It’s just that magic is sort of forbidden.” But she nodded at the comment about writing things down. “That sounds like a good idea.” One she hadn’t considered, but why shouldn’t she? If she managed to make new spells, she could write them down. If she did something with potions? She could write them down. Anything that worked.
Diana found even the smallest of spells surprising. She had dreamt of things for a little while and still it hadn’t all been...easy. She had no idea what other magic looked like, but she was very curious about it. She looked at the book, at the spell that Zee had pointed out. It sounded like something Faye would make, but it was worth the practice. “I did look at it before. Do you have everything we need down here. Even the cinnamon?”
“Nomannic,” was all Zatanna said at first, but then a small bottle with a twisty-top appeared in her hand, and she smirked lightly. “Yes, even the cinnamon.” She kept some around in the library, at the tea station (that’s really what it was - an old fashioned, antique bookcase for all the canisters and creamers and sugar bowls), in case people wanted to use it to spice up their drinks. But there was also plenty of fresh cinnamon in the potions area of the Guild as well.
The kettle whistling at them, she poured tea and then brought the mugs over to the table. “It’ll be good for you to get the practice in. Nothing happens overnight,” she added as a precaution - but surely Diana knew that. “However, once you get the hang of things you’ll feel more like...yourself. And practicing here is completely safe too.”
Everything was fortified. A lot. Because there had been a lot of accidents here - all part of the process.
Diana couldn’t disguise the surprise when the bottle appeared in her hands. She had no idea how anyone managed magic so easily. Even in her dreams they managed quickly and easily. Or maybe it just seemed that way. She didn’t see the early stuff. Just knew about the stuff from before. “That was kind of amazing. Even if it probably wasn’t even a really big spell.”
She felt a little more calm now that she had a place to work on even the simplest of spells and that Zee seemed to have a good idea about how to work on things. Carefully, Diana pulled the book closer to her again, studying the herbs that she was going to need. She was also going to need blood. “I need a knife or something to prick my finger.” She wasn’t afraid to make a small cut to get some blood. It was part of the potion, so it was something that had to happen. Then she’d get all the herbs together and see if it worked. It would be okay if it didn’t. If it did, she wasn’t sure what she’d do with it. Probably keep it locked up in her room or leave it here with a clear label and hope people didn’t feel like consuming it. It was hard to say.
“That’s good, because practicing at home has proven tricky. I have exploded a lot of lightbulbs and it’s getting a little suspicious.”
They didn’t call Zatanna the Mistress of Magic for nothing - she liked to think she knew her stuff, and she’d studied her own lineage plus the art of the arcane extensively. So, she was happy to help someone else come into her own - fondly, Zee remembered when she was first dealing with reawakened magic too.
“We’ve got everything in the potions room,” she advised, holding her mug of tea to sip from it once it was cool enough. “I’ll show you where it is, and then you can have at it?” Zatanna wouldn’t step in unless something blew up - but she was sure that Diana could handle this.
It was just down the hall. In there, Diana would find all things potioncrafting at her disposal - mortars and pestles, bottles, bits and bobs, herbs and stones, even a steam distillation chamber.
She had every intention of learning from her dreams, but they hadn’t shown her doing a terrible amount of magic at the moment outside of circle magic. But there were things she had taken from them. She was certain that she would be fine. She hoped anyway. It was just following instructions. Part of her mind added - like cooking. Only she was so bad at cooking that it was unfortunate.
She pushed those thoughts out of her head, picking up her cup of tea. It grounded her and kept her from going off into her thoughts. She needed to have her head in the game if she wanted to get this done properly. Once she had her tea in one hand, she picked her book up in the other. “Okay. I think that I’m ready.” Or at least she was more ready than she was previously. All she had to do now was pull her hair back and she’d be more ready. Mostly because she didn’t want her hair to get in her way.
It hadn’t taken very long to get there and once she was, she set her book down and put her tea off to the side. Diana took the bottle and put it down before starting to collect the things that she needed. If she had it all in reach, then she wouldn’t feel like she was going crazy. From there, it was a matter of making sure that everything was done by the book. Things were crushed and mixed together in water with her blood put in as the last ingredient. Nothing blew up, but then she wasn’t really sure it did anything. Somehow, at the end, blood in there and all, the liquid was still clear. “I think it’s done?”
Zee made sure she was in the room too, but stood off to the side with her tea and observed while Diana literally worked her magic. Potion-making was kind of a new thing for her, but she’d had some more practice ever since establishing the Guild and working with other magic users who were more versed in the craft. So when everything seemed to go smoothly, she couldn’t help but feel pleased.
“Nice job,” she complimented, coming around to look at the end result. Uncorking the bottle, she gave the contents a whiff. “It has an aura of something magical about it, the scent too - makes the nose tingle.” Since it was an intoxication potion (the effects were meant to be immediate, unlike what it would take with a few glasses of wine) she wouldn’t test it out right now.
Whatever Diana wanted to do with it was fine; it was just good she got the practice in. “Make sure to note it in your book. How are you feeling?”
It was probably luck that it wasn’t a complicated potion. Otherwise Diana might not have done as well with it. She had been nervous, but she’d forced herself to focus the same way she had during almost every day of school she’d gone through. Especially when it came to studying for exams and taking them. This was like that...except magic and there was a definite possibility for something to explode. Unlike college exams. Unless you were doing some sort of very advanced chemistry, which she hadn’t ever done.
“Thanks.” She was beaming as she watched Zee look at her potion. It was kind of amazing, actually. She wasn’t sure if it was just that she had stopped worrying about what could happen and just did it or just because she’d done magic. Like an actual human witch. She had sort of felt a surge of excitement when she’d managed to light the candle at her house. She’d attempted to use magic around Jim a couple of times, but nothing had really worked. This time (and like one other) they’d actually worked.
She reached into her bag for a pen, smile still in place. “Kind of like...I don’t know. Connected? Excited. Surprised, too. I didn’t think it was going to work.” She looked over at Zee. “I also want to say that I am surprised that my family would come up with something like this, but it’s actually not surprising at all. I guess I just see them all as older than me and forget that they were my age once, younger even. Probably easier to make a potion than to get your hands on alcohol if you’re a teenager. So it kind of makes sense.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Zatanna laughed, having not considered that. Teenagers who used their powers for the purposes of getting drunk or high - what a world, what a world. “I’ve never done that personally, but I did have my days of magical rebellion.”
In her dreams, when she was younger and first learning - it was a lot of tapping into the mystical, sexual side of the rituals. Threesomes and enhancing orgasms, transcending realms, that sort of thing. But being that she was soon to give birth and felt a lot older (more mature? Wiser?) these days, she wouldn’t wax poetic about the more wilder times.
But she understood feeling connected after something successful like this. “Anything else you want to try?” she asked. “Or would you like to just browse the library and find some other books to take to read?” Zee loaned them out regularly, as long as people returned them. There were usually no problems with that.
“I think magical rebellion is probably a little too much for what Adam and I did when we first found out. Probably because we had to not be caught.” So they’d had to be smart about things. Then again, Diana was a cautious individual in general. She’d bound the circle to keep their magic controlled, to protect people from their magic and to make their magic stronger in a way. She didn’t know if she was doing the right things, but she was trying.
She studied the book for a moment. “Do you have any more books on potions? Things like this or not exactly. But I mean...less Harry Potter and more...I’m not really sure what you’d call this.” But she did want to try to find other things. Things that she might be able to add to her Book of Shadows. “I feel like there’s a lot to learn. Even simple things like lighting a candle or opening things.” It would be nice if she knew if her family had a crystal. “Also if there’s anything about demons? It’s apparently a very serious problem in my dreams. Two of my friends were possessed and one of them died because of it.”
Demons. Now that was something Zatanna knew well; she was on her fourth set of dreams dealing with that exact same problem. “My fiance’s the demon expert,” she said, though she wasn’t terrible either - together, her and John were a formidable force whom the Justice League turned to when the problem was out of their jurisdiction - like anything magical. “He teaches Occult History at UCI,” she began to lead Diana back to the library, so the books could be perused and tailored to the girl’s interests.
“I can put you in touch with him, but in the meantime - “ Zee began moving the books to the table. And since she couldn’t lift heavy loads, she used a bit of a trick she had up her sleeve. Taolf, she told the books - who lifted themselves off the shelf and floated to the surface where she stacked them. Potions, earth-based magics (which included simple spells like lighting a candle, small things one could do with the elements), and some on demonology. “Start with these.”
“Is he?” Diana had yet to meet a demon expert. Cassie’s grandmother seemed to have some understanding of them, but Diana wasn’t sure that made her an expert. She at least knew how to destroy them. You had to set them on fire or drown them. The thought caused a flicker of sadness. Nick had drowned himself to kill the demon. At least that’s what it looked like. She’d never known him. Not here. She wasn’t sure she could say they knew each other well in the dreams, but the cross-over of emotions didn’t really make sense sometimes, so she still felt the sadness she’d felt in the dreams. “I’m kind of surprised I didn’t take that class yet. I work at an Occult store. Which...the irony is not lost on me.”
But perhaps her fiance might be able to give her some pointers in dealing with demons outside of fire and drowning. Ways to protect herself in case something happened. If the dreams could bring objects like her Book of Shadows into being, who said it couldn’t bring demons? She looked at the books. They were definitely something, but she was going to learn as much as she could and try not to let her dad see her doing anything terribly suspicious. “Thank you. You’re sure I can borrow these? I don’t mind bringing them back if someone else needs them before I’ve finished reading through them.”
“Of course I’m sure,” Zatanna waved away any concerns. “Some people read here, others prefer to take books with them. I’m not stingy.” She just required that the books were returned since someone else may need them later, but the loose library system worked pretty well for the Guild.
Taking a pen, she wrote Constantine’s name and email address down on the back of a card. “He’s on the network too, so feel free to send him a private message if you’d rather go that route,” she said, passing along the info to Diana. “Honestly, he knows more about demons than anyone. He can also give you recommendations for more books to read as well.” That was John’s specialty, whereas Zee liked to say her specialty was divination - it was what she felt most comfortable with, besides stage show magic. Performing was in her blood.
Diana would make a point to bring them back. She just...wanted to make a lot of notes and maybe a flow chart first. Maybe not the flow chart. Okay, there was probably going to be a flow chart. “If I need to get away, I might come here and spend a little time with the books, but thank you for the books anyway.” Even if she was trying to figure out how to get everything back to her house.
Taking the card, she smiled a little. “The only person I know that knows much about them I’ve never met. She’s just in the dreams. So it’s probably a good idea to have a new expert to go to.” At least there was someone. She couldn’t exactly ask most of the people she spoke to about these things because...well, maybe a few of them might have an idea, but a demon expert was probably the best way to go. “Thank you again for all of this. I feel a little less hesitant about the magic stuff.” A pause. “How’s your...divination stuff going?”
“Well enough,” Zatanna chuckled, rummaging in one of the cabinets to find a tote bag Diana could put her books into. Or the Mistress of Magic could make the tomes disappear and reappear in the girl’s room, but that was probably not necessary. However, a lot of books could indeed be heavy so with a knirhs spoken at the selections, they became matchbook-sized and easier to transport. Not to mention lighter.
She handed Diana the tote bag with a smile. “They’ll become full-sized when you get home. And next time you return to the Guild, I’ll go over lithomancy with you if you’re still interested.”
Diana stared at the books in wonder as she took the tote from her. They were so small. It was kind of crazy what stuff magic could do. But seeing it made her wonder what she'd be able to do and how strong the spells she'd be able to manage without the others around would be.
“I’d like that, thank you.” Mostly because Diana had an annoying need to learn about different things. Curiosity killed the cat. She carefully picked up her book. Putting it in her own bag and shouldered the tote. “And thank you again for the tea and letting me come bother you. I hope you have a good honeymoon.”