Side Story: Valerica in America (Ch. 3)

Previous chapter (Ch.2) 

“Is that – is that a dead body!?”

Valerica grinned. It had only been five weeks since she had started at Dunham Hollow College, and she was already making quite the impact.

“No, he’s alive, just bruised. He must have gotten drunk and fallen from that ledge –”

“How fucked do you have to be to stumble off a literal cliff?”

“Fireball and horniness will do that to you, man.”

A group of students began to amass just outside Barbara Hall, Valerica’s resident dormitory, talking nervously and gawking at the unconscious male student. The dormitory was surrounded by a large parking lot and barricaded by several hills, giving it the appearance of a small, concrete valley. One of those hills was famously named Makeout Drop, due to the rumors of a man’s demise shortly after his first kiss.

As soon as Valerica had heard the rumors, she just couldn’t help herself. Besides practicing necromancy and turning insects into breakfast, her third favorite hobby was fulfilling prophecies. There was nothing quite as fun as instilling the fear of death in a group of impressionable young people.

Students ran by her as she passed through the hallways, their faces puffy and red from hangovers and excitement at the prospect of carnage. That was a theme among people at this age, Valerica had observed, a morbid curiosity for the dead; they obsessed over spectacles called horror movies, poured over stories of true crime. Listened to “podcasts.” It was practically a breeding ground for necromancy, only no one had been capable enough to introduce the concept yet.

Yet.

She weaved through the rabid students easily, entering her dorm room and pushing the door open softly so as not to wake her usually-napping roommate. To her surprise, she didn’t hear the faint snore that usually welcomed her home. Instead, she found Momo pressed to the window, her breath fogging up the glass.

Valerica grinned.

“Something caught your interest?”

Momo yelped and jumped, hitting her knee on the radiator and then hopping around on one foot in pain. It was thoroughly adorable.

“Ouch, ouch…”

“Oh my, I didn’t mean to surprise you –”

“It’s fine,” Momo stuttered, blushing profusely as she always did when Valerica was around.

The smaller girl sat on her bed, embarrassed. She was surrounded, as always, by a variety of things that did not belong on a bed – a half-eaten lunch, a wet towel, an empty pizza box, several notebooks, colored pencils, and the thing Valerica now knew was called a laptop, a device in which one presses buttons to cast holographic magics.

“Did you see the body?” Momo asked, hugging her knees.

Valerica sat parallel to her and didn’t try to hide her smile.

“Yes, I saw him,” she chuckled. “Do you like my handiwork?”

Momo’s eyes bulged.

“Your… you – you didn’t push him, did you?”

Valerica laughed, undoing her hair and sliding her backpack to the floor. “Of course not. I do nothing in cold blood. He simply saw me performing my typical nighttime rituals. I tried to explain them to him, as I intimately know the pains and confusions of culture shock, but the moment I came closer he simply… sprinted off the ledge. Nosedived like a penguin.”

“Oh,” Momo remarked. “Well, that’s his fault, then.”

“Quite.”

Momo swallowed and went quiet, as was her usual response to conversation. Valerica, who had never been known for her patience, had gotten used to this with time – even so far as enjoying the odd, nervous silence.

She understood that it wasn’t that Momo was incapable of speaking. That wasn’t quite it. It was just that her brain was like a nest of hornets, a cage of wild animals that tore and bit at her every thought and impulse. In such conditions, Valerica found it to be quite a miracle that any sentence survived the slaughter long enough to leave her lips at all.

“I want you to show me.”

Valerica blinked, drawn out of her thoughts by the changed look on Momo’s face. Determination intermingled with embarrassment. That was a new one.

“Show you what, darling?”

“I know you leave every night before eight. I always wake up from my nap around then and I hear the door click shut. I – I’ve been wanting to ask you where you go,” she whispered, looking down at her feet, which kicked back and forth by the bedframe. “What you’re doing.”

“Oh, my nighttime rituals?” Valerica brightened, immediately reaching for her backpack. “Well certainly. How exciting. I thought I’d have to butter you up some more before I introduced you to necromancy, but it seems you’re on a much faster path that I could have expected. Always outperforming my expectations, dear.”

“Wait, did you say necromancy?”

—

Just by Makeout Drop was Hollow Hill, home to the DH’s Art Studio Building. It sat unused for most of the day, and was completely abandoned by the afternoon. The art program at DH was underpopulated to say the least; the DH Arts Department was ranked #2523 in the country, and Momo’s major, Drawing & Painting, was ranked #5436. A startling statistic, given that there were only 4,000 universities in the US.

Due to the building’s chronic lack of visitors, Valerica had encountered no issue with setting up shop there. She converted the pottery kiln into a cauldron, the anatomy textbooks into fire kindling, and the paintbrushes into rune-drawing utensils. All that was missing was an abundance of skulls.

“I know it’s not much, but…” Valerica sighed, gesturing towards her lair of debauchery. “I’ve made do with what this plane offers me.”

Momo looked positively scandalized.

“How has someone not caught you yet?”

The girl had gone ghastly white. Valerica worried for a second that she might faint.

“Caught me? Momo, no one enters this facility except for you,” she laughed. “When I first discovered this room, there were cobwebs as old as this realm covering the floorboards. I merely did the university a favor by repurposing it.”

Valerica went up to her makeshift cauldron and stirred the contents. The interior was bubbling with her newest recipe – a knockoff Nether imitation made from cranberries, rabbit blood, and several burgers from the dining hall. So far, the only ingredient that sparked any dark magic was the stale Burger King whopper she found in the men’s bathroom.

“What’s that?” Momo asked, pointing to the stew.

“A failure, evidently,” Valerica sighed. “None of your earthly materials are any good at replicating what we have in abundance on Alois. I can only perform basic magic here, like this – watch.”

Valerica yanked open a drawer and held up the rat skeleton she had found in the closet. Momo shrieked at its appearance, but Valerica paid her no mind, setting it down on the table and pointing her red-tipped fingernail at it.

“[Raise Undead].”

It was truly embarrassing how long the skeleton took to even twitch. Valerica’s magic was severely reduced here, for whatever reason; she theorized that the spell she cast back in Alois had sapped her Mana almost completely, and then when the spell activated and transmigrated her to Earth, she landed with a much reduced, and un-regenerating, Mana Pool.

So not only was she limited to low-level magics, but she was further depleting herself every time she cast a spell. If she used enough of her Mana, she’d be left at zero – magicless. A completely normal mortal. As a consequence, she had been very conservative with her Mana. The last thing she wanted was to be stranded, with no way back home.

But, strangely, she found no problem making an exception for Momo. There was something about the girl that made her want to act impulsively. Despite her terribly regular appearance and below average ability to express herself, Valerica found herself drawn to her like a moth to a flame.

“Valerica, it’s moving,” Momo cried out, her entire face stuck in terrorized paralysis. “Is it some kind of robot? Does it have a controller?”

The skeletal rat sniffed the contents of the table exploratorily before sitting on its haunches and staring at Momo, hollow-eyed.

“Robot? I don’t know what that is. It’s simply an undead being, darling. And I think he likes you.”

The rat extended its neck to sniff Momo’s hand, snuggling its vertebrae on her palm. The girl looked horrified at first, but then, slowly, she softened, seemingly endeared by the animal.

After a moment, Momo looked up, giving Valerica that same, searching look again.

“Are you… are you a witch?” she said softly.

“Oh, Momo,” Valerica grinned, bringing her hand to Momo’s shoulder and squeezing it affectionately. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”