Sparrow Truman May 19th,20XX

“Derela.”

The crowd bowed to me as I walked past, not daring to make eye contact with me. I could see a few familiar faces from the group I had dealt with mixed into this new crowd and ended up looking at them for a split second longer than normal. One of them let out a small yelp and summoned his broom, flying away from me as quickly as he could.

He was a lively one for sure. That explained why he had managed to wake up from the energy-draining of the other day so quickly. I made a mental note to have Ion gather all of the participants for me later on so I could see the difference between those that had woken up earlier and later. I’d been too focused on making it non-lethal that I hadn’t had the energy to take into consideration the difference in energy levels. I briefly wondered if it had anything to do with magic capacity as I wandered through the halls.

Once again Rubella had summoned me to take advantage of Oaklyn’s knowledge. While she hadn’t explicitly said so, there were only so many reasons why the leader of the witches would keep calling a newly redeemed witch, even if she had accepted me as her direct apprentice.

Recently she had been a lot nicer to me even to the point of being ingratiating. It had started with her hinting that she would look away if something unfortunate happened to those children that I’d punished before, and had more than hinted that she could help me with the cleanup, an offer I had rejected. There was something she wanted, but what I couldn’t figure out was why she felt the need to suck up to me to get it.

I kept walking when I was suddenly ambushed by a group of young witches, slightly younger than Dione. They looked up to me with their glistening eyes, each a varying shade of each colour of the rainbow. One of the first spells that a young witch learned was cosmetics; how to change your hair, eyes and even stature if you wished to refine the spell to that level. By the time one got older, the appeal of these spells would be overshadowed by much more fun ones, such as how to make a contract with a familiar.

Speaking of which.

I made a small detour from the road of the dorms to Rubella’s house and went to the pet shop instead.

The reptilian eyes glared back at me from the window but I ignored their baleful stares and focused on the one I wanted. A small finger snake, only the size of a regular pencil was coiled up in the corner of its cage.

Its bright purple scales glistened in the sunlight and its blood-red crown contrasted nicely with the intense purple of its body.

Each scale looked like dyed glass and one had to squint to look at it properly, but as it slept its scales reversed and it was suddenly incredibly dull and looked a coloured painting having a black and white filter put over it.

For all its size and visage, the little finger snake was still immature and had yet to grow in its hallucinogenic poison or disguising scales. Buying it now would only be a waste of money and time but for some reason, I just couldn’t wait any longer.

It was usually asleep when I came for it, but the one time I had found it awake its bright blue eyes had hit me with a giant wave of familiarity and I found it impossible to abandon.

With the wares I had collected from the group of bullies the other day, I figured I should have enough to pay for it and its supplies. After I’d contracted it I would leave the dreary stuff to Ion.

I walked in prepared to bargain the price down to something acceptable, after all, I’d heard of shops purposefully inflating prices when they settled around student dorms but for some reason, the purchase went incredibly smoothly. If I didn’t know any better I would have thought that the owner was just trying to get rid of the precious little snake.

“Ah! Maybe don’t try to touch it!”

I’d decided to make the contract right there and then in the store since I already knew the spell. In line with her defensive personality, Oaklyn had contracted with multiple animals as she fought and would often use them as death soldiers or meat shields if she was ever outnumbered. I had no intention of doing any such things but having something that could understand you and would follow ever order wasn’t something to be against. Although we had the goblins, precious few there were, we all knew that they were two-edged swords. The only reason we had managed to get the few that we had was as a result of an ambush on an espionage team that had been sent to spy on us.

There were about seventy goblins that had been brainwashed to serve the witches. It was a bit big for an espionage team in my opinion but since rubella didn’t seem worried about it I chose not to worry as well. At worst, I had confidence in my abilities to escape.

I opened the glass cage and lifted out the little snake, enjoying the feel of its immature scales on my skin. They were softer than they looked, more like glass than diamond and weren’t sharp enough yet to cut me. The little snake coiled up in my hand and raised its head to make eye contact with me.

I felt its consciousness bump against mine as I started the spell, it was premature and curious of the large creature that had freed it from its cage but it couldn’t form sentient thoughts yet. The potential had been confirmed though.

I was once again suspicious as to why I was getting it for so cheap. Contracts that had the potential for speech could easily go up to five times the price of one that couldn’t.

My unasked question was answered soon enough by the shopkeepers’ low whistle.

“Woah, that little fella usually hates being touched. Looks like he took a liking to ya’”

I finished preparation for the spell and put one of my fingers into its mouth, waiting for it to accept the contract. Its eyes narrowed a bit as it realized what was happening and for a moment widened its jaw to avoid drawing blood but it eventually nipped at my finger, just enough to get a drop or two of blood and its blue eyes tool on a silver sheen.

The contract was complete.

It curled back into a ball and went into a slumber, processing the new feeling of sharing my magic. It's going to sleep was a gradual process and its large eyes stayed open in the middle of the process.

“Iren Will be your name.”

I found myself talking to it as I looked into its almost human-like eyes. If not for the vertical pupils and eyelids they wouldn’t have been out of place on a humanoid creature. I kept the idea to myself, lest a younger witch decided to be creative and try it on themselves. It was rare but there was always one young witch or the other that tried to alter the cosmetic spell and ended up making it permanent.

I arrived at Rubella’s study and let myself in, not even bothering to knock. After all, she was the one that had invited me over. The cage that held the little snake went onto the edge of the workbench. Later on, I would create a space for it on my vine of tattoos but for now, I had to stick to the old fashioned method of safekeeping.

I was about to take a seat and relax while I waited when a bright golden and green envelope made its way in front of me. I looked up to see Rubella, in yet another wig grinning at me.

“It looks like the little fairy prince had the idea to come to rescue you. What do you think we give him a bit of incentive?”

There was something off about the way she spoke and my head began to ache as she brought up something I assumed laid in my sealed away memory.

“What is this Rubella? Where did this come from?”

It stank of fairy magic and was a royal’s magic. What I didn’t understand was what it had to do with me. I did somewhat resent the fairies for their attacks on our people at the border, but it wasn’t like we hadn’t given them any casualties either.

“Ah, I forgot you sealed your memories away. It looks like you were quite close to the fairy prince in the past and he offered you a wish as a present. He gave you that so you could summon him whenever you wanted it granted.”

I got a bad feeling in my gut but eventually dismissed it as the backlash from making my first contract. I’d read that some witches just weren’t too compatible with the process of sharing their magic through another living creature.

Rubella handed it over to me and looked on expectedly as I held it in both hands.

Something in me, it was very quiet but very insistent, pushed me not to use the wish but I didn’t see why. In this war, we needed every advantage we could get. And the sooner we got the prince, the sooner they could concede and the war would be over.

I knew the plan, and it even made sense, but for some reason, I felt my heart rip at the same time I tore the paper and activated the spell.

Something was wrong with me, but I got the feeling that unless I got rid of the memory seal I wouldn’t ever find out.