Conjured - Chapter 3

I feel a little bad that this story's taking a while to get back to the size stuff? But it's a complicated, high-concept premise, so there's really no getting around it, and I can't say I'm not having fun writing it.

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“What are you talking about?” Roch stood up from the sofa and backed away slowly. Elsidora watched him with a pleading, shameful expression.

“I… I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I was… It’s like I said, I was desperate, but I didn’t want to hurt anybody. So, I…”

“Elsidora, no. No, you’re wrong! I… I exist! I have a house, a family!”

“Conjuring a familiar is relatively easy, though their forms are usually restricted to small animals. As far as I know, no one’s attempted a human one before…”

“I have a profession! If I’m not real then, then, then who shoes the horses!?”

“Not before tonight, at least.”

“I had a childhood! I have parents! I, I, oh! When I was eleven years old I cut my arm playing by the lake, the scar never healed, see!?” Roch rolled his sleeve up and gasped in horror when he saw the skin was smooth and flawless.

“But you… you came out too good. You’re a whole person! You have all these thoughts and feelings and and and false memories and. And the whole point of you was supposed to be that I could avoid hurting anyone and instead I’ve done something so much worse! I’m sorry, Roch, I’m so… so…” Elsidora started sniffling.

“This… you… It’s a trick. This whole time, you’ve been lying to me!”

“No! I haven’t—”

“You give me your sob story, garner my sympathy, and then tell me I’ve no home to return to? Do your curses work better if I give in willingly or something?!” Roch steadily raised his voice, causing the witch to recoil back. “I’m leaving, and I’m leaving now.” He turned and stormed toward the front door.

“No, no! You can’t! STOP!”

All of a sudden, Roch collapsed to the floor, his legs devoid of feeling. Panic rising, he clawed at the wooden floor, dragging himself toward the door. Elsidora had leapt to her feet and reached toward him, too paralyzed with indecision to intervene further as his hand stretched upward to grab the door knob. The door swung open with a creak, and Roch reached out for the dark woods that sprawled out before him beyond the threshold.

It didn’t hurt, exactly. The sensation was so novel that Roch couldn’t find the words to describe it, though it certainly wasn’t pleasant. He watched in horror as his hand dissolved, as every inch of him that came in contact with the night air transformed into a whorl of flesh-colored smoke. A hand suddenly clamped onto his shoulder and dragged him back inside, smoke continuing to bleed from the stump of his arm as Elsidora kneeled down to tend to it.

“Oh no, oh no, oh, you poor thing, let me just…” Roch was too stunned to stop her from grasping what was left of his forearm with both hands. There was a faint glow, and the smoke stopped flowing out of him.

“Wh… what did you…?”

“You’re my familiar, Roch. Your form is sustained by my mana. The house is suffused with centuries of the stuff, so you can move around here freely… but outside, you have to stay close to me, or your body will start to dissipate.”

“That’s not… no. You’re lying.” Roch's voice was beginning to catch in his throat. “You hexed me, or, or…”

“Your legs stopped working because you can’t disobey a direct command from me. You haven’t tried to leave until now because you have an instinctive aversion to straying too far away from me. And you keep staring at me because… because…” Streaks of orange and pink shot through the near-jet of her hair.

“...Because why?” Roch swallowed; he felt like he already knew the answer.

“Because I. I designed you to be in love with me.” Shame and embarrassment overwhelmed Elsidora’s face as she turned away. “You just! You weren’t supposed to be so real! I thought I was making… I don’t know… a doll. A doll that could talk and, do… other, things… Ohhhh gods. I’m a monster. You weren’t supposed to be able to, to think for yourself like this. Oh! Oh your hand, I’m sorry, I… here.” She took his stump once more and breathed out slowly. Roch cast his eyes downward, barely paying any mind to the new hand emerging from his arm.

“It’s just… not possible. Alara…” It was finally Roch’s turn to cry. “Wynn…”

“Oh! Oh, don’t, don’t cry! I…” Elsidora found herself caught in a loop, reaching out to comfort him, stopping herself, and then reaching out again. Roch just quietly wept.

“Maybe, um… Maybe I could, conjure the rest of your family! I could, um, I could make you an Alara and a Wynn! That… That would actually be a lot of magic to maintain. But, but maybe I could figure out how to do it!”

“They wouldn’t be my Alara and Wynn. Mine don’t… they aren’t… oh, gods, why?!” 

“Um! Um! No, that’s, that’s fine, I could fix that! I could just, um, I could erase your memory of this conversation! You won’t remember anything about it! Well... You’d still need my mana to survive…” Elsidora’s eyes unfocused as she found herself torn between trying to help and getting lost in how to solve such complex magic. Roch looked up at her, fear in his eyes, and started shuffling back toward the wall.

“No, no, no no no no. Y-you can’t do that. You can’t just, just play with my mind like that. That’s not… I’m… “ 

I’m what? “My own person?”

I’m literally not.

Elsidora took note of Roch’s terror and covered her mouth, horrified at what she was doing to him. Roch trembled as he realized that, despite everything, he was still feeling the urge to comfort her.

“I… I’m sor—”

“Don’t. Don’t say you’re sorry. You, you keep apologizing and it doesn’t… I… I don’t care that you’re sorry. I don’t need an apology, I need you to fix this. How can you fix this?”

Elsidora was taken aback, but nodded. Hand to chin, she squinted, deep in thought, her hair lightening from bluish black to the same purple as her eyes.

“Maybe… Well, I would need your permission, obviously. But maybe I could figure out how to alter the part of you that’s…” she sighed. “In love with me. And the part that’s compelled to obey me. And… maybe, I could figure out some kind of portable store of mana that you could keep with you. It would drain over time, so you’d need to come see me to have it refilled, but… that would mostly give you freedom from me.”

“You… you wouldn’t change anything else about my mind?”

“No! Of course not. I swear it. I guess… it’s probably hard for you to trust me right now, but. I promise that I would do nothing but remove your infatuation with me.”

Roch sat silently for a moment. “...Okay. I. I suppose that is, the best I’m going to get.”

“I think I have a solid theoretical basis for how to do this… but it’s going to be delicate. Think of it like surgery: I have to sort of ‘open you up’ to adjust things, and doing that without causing harm is going to take research and experimentation. A lot of research and experimentation, more than I can do tonight. Why don’t we turn in for the night, and I’ll get to work on it at first light? I’ll get you a blanket and you can sleep down here.

A part of Roch wanted to argue, still wanted to insist that no, he was a real man, with a real family waiting for him. He rubbed his arm and shuddered at the absence of the scar he remembered having all his life.

“Alright.”

A short time later, Roch was making himself comfortable on the sofa while Elsidora brought him a bucket of water and a ladle.

“You’re not supposed to need any food or water… but you’re also not supposed to have your own wants and desires or… thoughts, really, so. Just in case.”

“What if I need to, um…?”

“Need to…? Oh! Uh. That, is an excellent question. I guess… I guess come get me and I can walk you outside?”

Roch’s face reddened. So he had to behave like a child. Or worse, a pet.

“You can help yourself to anything in the kitchen, though, again, you’re not really supposed to get hungry. If you need anything, I’m just upstairs.”

Roch looked up at Elsidora and grimaced; there was a part of him filled with regret that he wasn’t going to be sharing her bed, and a second part of him that was ashamed of the first. He was grateful that, unlike the witch, his hair didn’t betray his feelings.

“Well, um. Goodnight.” Elsidora snapped her fingers, and the room was immediately darkened, illuminated only by the soft light of the fireplace. With everything else going on, Roch hadn’t even stopped to think how strange it was that her home was so brightly-lit in the middle of the night.

The witch ascended the stairs, and for the first time in his incredibly short life, Roch was alone. 

Once Elsidora freed him, what on Earth would he do? His friends and family either didn’t exist or had never met him. In fact… could he even go to the village? How would they react if a strange man emerged from the woods, knowing all their names? They’d think he was some sort of evil spirit.

And they wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

So then, he’d have to go elsewhere. Start an entirely new life. Maybe… maybe somewhere out there was a woman like the Alara that lived in his mind. Someone soft, patient, caring… No, no, not the woman upstairs. That wasn’t… He was just thinking of her because of her magic. And, because of her curves. And her eyes, and her lips. And the way that she’d seemed like a goddess among men when she’d reduced his size.

Stop it.

No, he would move far, far away from here, where it wasn’t strange that no one knew his name. Except… no, he couldn’t do that either. Elsidora had said that he’d need to see her regularly to receive more mana. 

He couldn’t leave, but he couldn’t return home either. He had no home, just like Elsidora had said. What then?! He began to weep once more, realizing that he was doomed to a life of loneliness and isolation.

…Just like her.

Elsidora… she was a caring person. She hadn’t meant to cause all of this… but could he even blame her if she had? If not for her magic, he wouldn’t be alive, wouldn’t have any of the memories of his idyllic old life. It stung to know that they were false, but… here, alone in the dark, they were just as real as anything. He loved Alara, even though she didn’t exist anywhere but within his memory. And since the witch had created his memory when she created him… shouldn’t he be grateful?

No. No! That was ridiculous. He was a monster, a pathetic, wretched creature, and she’d made him this way. She deserved nothing but his ire, and the only reason he kept feeling otherwise was because of the charm she’d cast on his heart.

But, then… she clearly understood that she’d done a terrible thing, and regretted it deeply. There was no doubting the authenticity of her contrition. A less scrupulous person might’ve realized that Roch was a failed experiment and immediately done away with him. Instead, Elsidora was going to try to set him free. She was kind and compassionate.

And lonely. Roch had said it himself: he might’ve done something crazy and desperate if he’d gone so long without any true companionship. She just wanted to be close to someone; could he really hate her for such a humble desire? He’d felt an unbearable loneliness for only a few minutes and it felt as though it might crush him. Elsidora had endured it for three hundred years. And even despite that, she hadn’t become embittered or jaded. Her heart had held strong, remained warm enough to feel guilt and shame, to want to help him even though she didn’t know how. 

What other feelings could a heart that strong hold?

Roch didn’t know how long he laid there, thoughts swirling in his mind. It was hard to track the time in the dark, and the fire seemed enchanted to never fade. But eventually, he gently removed the blanket Elsidora had lent him, rose to his feet, crept up the stairs, and lightly rapped on her bedroom door.

“Elsidora? I’m sorry to wake you, but we need to talk.”

Roch heard muffled footsteps, and as the door creaked open, his eyes lit up as the tall, voluptuous witch filled his vision.

“What is it?”

Roch threw his arms around her and, stretching upward, pressed his lips into hers.