Chronos, Chapter 13 (Patreon)

Chapter 13 – Preparation and Consultation

Once the heroines had left, I used my temporal reversion ability to ‘heal’ my knee to how it was before I’d wrenched it about like that. The end result was like natural healing, or even a healing potion, but much faster. Of course, the down side of such an ability is that if I used it on anyone else, it had the ‘lovely’ side-effect of giving me all they had felt from the moment of injury until when I healed them, all at once. That was not something I was willing to do for just anyone.

Chronos’s   Knowledge (Arcane Lore) check: 1d20+20 = 36 (Success) (DC 25)

Research   Time: 52 hours

That done, I froze time in the library, so I could start working on the ritual. Oh, I could have easily changed a couple variables, and been done, but that wasn’t what I wanted for this. No, I’d had a flash of inspiration on how to deal with my vulnerability to those who were immune to magic.

Instead of devising a device to summon a minion from some other plane, or similar ideas, I would just ‘tag’ a few minions in the real world, and alter them to serve. The key was in creating a ‘soul card’, which would allow me to teleport my minions to me, or send them away again later. Well, the card wouldn’t do that, but it would work with the device I still needed to make it happen.

Of course, I would have to be in my Chronos outfit to do this, or I’d be instantly giving myself away. Pretty sure there was no way I could lie my way around summoning enslaved heroines to my side as Doctor Livingston. Granted, this whole scenario was for a desperation play, which meant that, by that point, I was likely already found out, but it was still something to consider.

Ritual Effects

Transform   12 – Bestow Curse Mark, Powers

Feat:   Innate

Extras:   Duration (Continuous)

Flaws:   Action (Full), Limited (Must be Willing, Bound, or Helpless), Range (Touch),   Requires Grapple, Tiring

Drawbacks:   Power Loss (Must chant incantation)

Cost: 4   PP

Mental   Transform 12 – Alter Mind

Feats:   Innate, Subtle 2 (Unnoticeable)

Extras:   Duration (Continuous), Insidious

Flaws:   Action (Full), Check Required (Knowledge: Arcane Lore, DC 22), Distracting,   Limited (Must be Willing, Bound, or Helpless), Range (Touch), Requires   Grapple

Drawbacks:   Power Loss (Must chant incantation)

Cost: 8   PP

Create   Object 1 – Create Soul Card

Feats:   Innate, Subtle 2 (Unnoticeable)

Extras:   Insidious

Flaws:   Limited (Only makes Card), Permanent, Range (Touch)

Drawback:   Power Loss (Must Say Incantation)

Total   Cost: 15 PP

Design/Craft   DC: 25

The new ritual would be more involved, complex enough that even I would need to put in some work to pull it off correctly. However, it would also make the effects of the ritual harder to break down. With Bethany, someone who could Nullify magic would be able to revert her to her former self, undoing my transformations, and the curses and immunities that sprang from them. Or, they could use another transformation effect to counter and negate my own. That, naturally, was not something I wanted to come up against with superpowered individuals.

The first part of the answer to this problem was to fortify the transformations, making them immune to being simply nullified interfered with in normal ways. That much was easy enough to do, but it wouldn’t make me completely safe. If hell had no fury like a woman scorned, I was not keen to see what would happen if a superheroine found out I’d been playing with her mind. I somehow doubted that the result would be all that healthy for me.

Ritual   Outcome:

Transformation

Fort   DC 22 to resist.

Target   gains Curse of Absolute Obedience, Soul Card, Timelocked, Fortified

Curse   of Absolute Obedience (Very Common, Major): Target must obey all orders given   to her by Remington/Chronos, no matter what. Failure to comply results in a   magical backlash, causing damage. (+5 PP)

Soul   Card (Uncommon, Major): Target is vulnerable to all powers using their Soul   Card as a focus, 100% increase to DC modifier. (+3 PP)

Timelocked:   Immunity 2 – Target become immune to Time Powers, Aging. Noticeable (Curse   Mark). (Cost 1 PP)

Fortified:   Immunity 18 – Target becomes immune to Alteration Effects, Critical Hits, Disease,   and Mental Effects. Distracting (Lose dodge bonus to AC when immunity comes   into play), Noticeable (Curse Mark), Power Loss (Does not work against Remington/Chronos’s   powers). (Cost 7 PP)

Transformation   (Mental)

Will   DC 22 to resist.

Target’s   memories altered so that she remembers consenting to the Curse of Absolute   Obedience. Personality altered to make her more submissive to   Remington/Chronos. Mental trigger gives her pleasure when she obeys   Remington/Chronos.

Create   Object

Soul   Card of target created. Can be used as a focus of other powers, allowing them   to have greater effect on the individual.

The mental transformation was the same as what I had used on Bethany, just something a little harder to remove. And the Soul Card was something that I would be able to use… once I created something to use it, but I was building for the future, here. When you have power over time itself, making plans is essential.

The real kicker was the physical transformations. I would give them the same benefits as my own Timelocked ability, rendering them immune to aging and to time powers. I would also fortify them, making them immune to disease, and to effects that would try and transform them or control them along with a couple other things. Well, except for any of my own abilities, of course. But that went without saying.

This meant that, once the ritual, which I was now calling the Enslavement Ritual, was complete, the girls would be forever bound to me. They would be unable to resist my commands, and it would take untold power to break the controls from the outside, or rewrite them. Once bound, there was no chance that they could be freed.

I would need to give them orders so that they couldn’t speak about the changes, of course. But, other than that? Their daily lives would be much the same, until I called for them.

Once, of course, I designed an artifice to call for them. And found a way to scrounge up the points that the System would no doubt require me to pay for the privilege of summoning my slaves. I would have to get creative with that.

But I could worry about that later. For now, I set about sketching out the diagrams that went into the ritual design. Like all my ritual spells, the diagrams were written in Sanskrit. As one of the oldest, most primal languages, it had the greatest connection to the roots of magic. A side benefit was that few people, if any, in the modern world could speak or read it like a native, other than me.

I then translated the fifteen pages of diagrams into a one-page summary in English. I didn’t lie about the contents of the ritual, of course. But I didn’t say everything there was to say, either, leaving out many of the changes that would be done to them. Thankfully, the new version was not as reliant on them being completely willing, another thing I neglected to mention in the summary.

That done, I unfroze time. I had spent days frozen in time, but it was still barely past the library’s opening time. That didn’t bother me, of course. One could not have done everything I had done, if you weren’t willing to be patient, and spend the time needed to do things right.

The normal crowds came through. Well, ‘crowd’ would be generous, but there were normally two or three people down here during business hours. There were always people doing research, whether they were local mages, or students at Liberty City University. Most of their topics were on basic subjects, and not anything more dangerous than love potions.

“Excuse me?”

So, when a pretty black girl wearing a LCU sweatshirt came up to the desk, the only surprising thing was that I hadn’t seen her before. Usually, students would have been by at least once before, at the start of classes, if they were freshmen in the Mystic Arts school at the university, and the semester was already well under way by this point. Perhaps she was a transfer student?

“Yes, how can I help you, miss?

“Do you have any, well, books on magic for beginners?”

Ah, that explained it. I smiled at her, and said, “Let me guess, seeing students at the University was your first exposure to the Mystic Arts, right? And you wanted to know if you could learn how to cast some spells?”

She blushed, and said, “It sounds silly when you say it like that, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, not at all. If you ask the professors in the department, I’m sure you’ll find that more than a few of their students transfer into the program as sophomores, rather than starting as Mystic Arts majors. Of course, they also have people who quit, because the higher-level courses are no joke.”

“No, I’m not looking to major in it. I like my history major just fine. I was just hoping to learn a bit, do some little charms, or potions?”

I smiled, and nodded at her. “Then I have good news and bad for you, miss…?”

“Oh! I’m Yahlonda Lane, a freshman at LCU.”

“Well, Yahlonda, like I said, there’s good news and bad. The good news is that it is possible for even beginners to use magic, especially if you don’t mind a bit of research. I won’t lie to you and say you’ll be throwing spells around like in the last ‘James Frye, Agent of W.A.N.D.’ movie, but you could definitely get some potions or rituals together.”

“What is the bad news, then?”

“Well, the bad news is that you’re going to need XP from the System to unlock the basics, if you haven’t already. So, I can’t show you any books that would allow you to simply throw some ingredients in a pot and cook up a love potion, but I can give you some resources that will help your studies, and give you a better idea of what to shoot for, when you do unlock some XP to spend. If you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions, of course.”

Yahlonda’s face fell at the mention of the System keeping her from just jumping into magic, but she took a breath, and said, “Yes, I want to learn!”

“All right, then. First, which do you prefer more, cooking, or choreographed dancing? I don’t mean which are you better at, but which one do you like doing more?”

“Um, I don’t know any choreographed dances. I just go with the flow. So, cooking?”

“Don’t worry, there are no wrong answers here. Think of it like a personality test to see what kind of job best suits you. Now, what kind of crafts do you know? Painting? Sculpting? Cooking? Anything that makes a physical product. And, for this one, tell me the one you’re actually best at, since that will make a big difference.”

“Oof. Does calligraphy count? Otherwise, it would definitely be cooking.”

“Either one would work. Do you have either of those skills through the System?”

“Yes! I have ‘Craft (Expressive)’. It covers things like writing. Novels, poems, and the like.”

“Great, that limits what you’ll need to spend, at first. From what you’ve told me, you should be able to at least get started with magic if you can find two XP points to spend, though three would be more helpful.”

“Oh. I don’t have any XP right now. And I don’t like fighting. Is there any way to get some XP that doesn’t involve combat?”

“Sure, but they involve time. People have seen that, as they work and improve in their studies, or at their jobs, they gain some XP, but it is slow going, and usually still involves, if not combat, then the work of delving into new things and overcoming new challenges. That will help you over the course of your education, and as you go out into the world, but won’t do anything for you right now, I’m afraid.”

“Drat!”

I chuckled. “The only way to get XP in a hurry, if you’re looking for something like that, is to take on some kind of drawback, as the System calls them.”

“Yes! I learned about those in the System Overview class they have at the University! But they didn’t say anything about how to gain them.”

“They wouldn’t, no. The idea of going out and talking to students about the best way to get themselves cursed for a boost in power is not something that their PR consultants approved of. And, for that matter, I’m not really supposed to give out those kinds of leads, either. It is irresponsible, and all.”

“Is there any way I can change your mind? I really want to get back at Claire Mitchells for stealing my boyfriend.”

Ah, to be a kid again, when everything was so simple. “I could be persuaded to give you an introduction. There’s an alchemist that could hook you up with something to get you going. Afterwards, you would need to come back, before spending the points, so I could advise you.”

“Please! I’ll do anything!”

I could feel my smile turn a bit predatory, but I didn’t care. “Anything, hmm?”