Mina woke up the next morning feeling better rested than she had felt in years. As her mind adjusted to consciousness, she pulled out her phone. That was when she stumbled upon a campus news story, about a student who had fallen down the stairs and become paralyzed while streaking through campus. While she didn't know the name, she recognized the face.
Suddenly, memories of last night flooded her brain. After stealing a strange medieval text from the library archives, Libellus Fulminatus, she had used its magic to paralyze a boy who was following her. Then she remembered how she toyed with him, taking his clothes from him, letting his head slam on the concrete for fun, taking advantage of his helplessness by fucking his ragdoll body.
She was attacked, she told herself. She tried to hide, and only started fighting back when there was no other option. If she had got caught up in a sadistic frenzy, that was justified because he was clearly a bad person. These things were all true, but it formed a comforting narrative that allowed her to avoid facing the reality of what had happened.
After that, she didn't feel the need to find test subjects right away. While this prevented her from testing spells like the book's honesty spell, she was content practicing the milder spells in her room, learning to summon cool breezes that seemed to come from nowhere, even indoors and create little sparks of electricity in her fingertips. Each spell required a combination of hand movements and strange words. Some of those words sounded like they came from languages like Greek or Arabic, but some were either so garbled that their origin was impossible to guess, or they were nonsense from the beginning.
Doing magic had made Mina more confident, too. She let her hair down instead of putting it up, and left more and more of her shirts unbuttoned, to show off some cleavage of her albeit small breasts. During class, she answered her professors' questions when she knew the answer, rather than worry that it made her look like a know-it-all. Afterwards, she asked them about things mentioned during class, or even things completely unrelated.
One day, for example, her medieval literature teacher explained that medieval Latin texts often used symbols as shorthand for common words, a fact that helped her decipher Libellus Fulminatus. She would have asked Dr. Penumbral, her Latin teacher, but she was worried he'd realize that she was the one who had stolen that text from the archives. Even after this revelation, much of it was still beyond her understanding, but it pierced the veil enough to better grasp the secrets within.
She even started talking to some of the other people in class. Boys had started flirting with her, not in the condescending "I can see your beauty past your prudishness" way that they used to do, but with a respect she wasn't used to. While she didn't have any interest in most of them, she took the opportunity to learn how to flirt.
Girls, too, talked about their lives and frustrations with her, and she returned the favor, venting about school or her parents. None of them were real friends. They were all people who would have ignored her or mocked her just a few weeks ago. But it was fun to let them believe she enjoyed the meaningless small talk.
Still, despite all the improvements that had happened in her life, Mina kept going back to the night she had tortured that man who had tried to rape her. She felt more alive in that moment than she ever had before, or she ever did since. Having someone's life and future in her hands felt right, and she wanted to do it again. The problem was that she would only do it to someone who deserved it, and it was hard to get people to reveal their evil that way. Sure, most people were jerks, but that hardly seemed a reason to paralyze them, or electrocute them, or anything else so severe.
Her opportunity came from her friend Liliana. She was taking medieval literature with her, not out of any genuine interest, but because she needed the English credit. She was one of the girls who had asked Mina once for help with class, though they had started actually talking like friends a few weeks ago. She invited Mina to go to her dorm with her to drink wine one night, and Mina agreed, mostly because she wanted the free wine.
At first, they just listened to music and complained about professors, and Mina stayed because she enjoyed the mild buzz. The mood shifted when Liliana said, "You know my boyfriend, Kyle Ryans?"
"Tall, lanky, philosophy major?" Mina asked, mostly rhetorically. She knew Kyle. He had started flirting with her recently, and he was so forward with his intentions, so serious about making plans, that Mina had assumed he was single. "He's in my history class."
"I think he's cheating on me."
"What? But you're so pretty! I'm honestly so jealous."
Mina meant this. Liliana's body had everything she wished she had. She had always hated her own pale skin, and yearned for Liliana's golden complexion, a product of her Hispanic background. Liliana's thick thighs, plump butt and huge breasts made Mina aware of how small her chest was, and how shapeless her legs were. And the curls of Liliana's hair gave it so much volume and life.
"You don't mean that," Liliana said. "You're so skinny and beautiful, and I'm fat."
"Stop it! What about these?"
Mina, perhaps more drunk than she realized, reached over and grabbed Liliana's boob over her t-shirt. Liliana made a face somewhere between shock and curiosity, but didn't move the hand away. Instead, she said, "You're getting pretty bold for a girl I could throw across the room."
"I can handle myself," Mina smirked, moving her hand down Liliana's torso onto her thigh, only the denim of a tight pair of jeans separating their skin.
"Girl, I don't know if this is the wine talking or I just want to get back at my boyfriend, but you're giving me thoughts."
"If you want revenge, I've got a better plan than just messing around behind his back."
"Oh really?" Liliana asked, crawling onto Mina's lap and placing an accusatory finger on her chest. "My original plan was just to leak these embarrassing photos he sent me, but you've piqued my interest."
"I've got something better than that."
"I didn't realize you had a naughty side."
"I'm a good girl! You can trust me."
"Is that part of the plan? Being a good girl for me?"
Mina couldn't tell if this teasing was meant to be friendly girl banter or actual flirtation. Liliana had never said she was bisexual, and Mina had hardly explored her own desires enough to even know what she was. Still, she thought it might be fun to go along with it, so she wrapped her arms around Liliana's neck and said, "Now who's getting bold?"
Liliana pushed Mina down onto the bed and leaned down, as though to give her a kiss. Mina placed a finger on Liliana's succulent lips, as though shushing her, and said, "Save it for tomorrow. You can come back to my dorm at nine o'clock and we'll have even more fun."
In actuality, however, Mina was just uncomfortable with that level of intimacy. She had never been kissed before, let alone by a girl, and it felt wrong to have her first kiss be done half-drunk, mostly joking, and while plotting about getting revenge on a man. Besides, Liliana seemed to think she would be the dominant one. Mina needed to establish that, even though she was smaller and weaker, she was the one in charge.
Mina started the next day luring Kyle into her trap. This was the easy part. She texted him fairly early, asking him if he wanted to come over to talk about their upcoming essays comparing two powers that claimed succession over the Roman Empire. Kyle didn't even pretend to be wholly interested in study; his reply was "as long as you don't mind the conversation going other places" with a skeevy emoji sticking its tongue out.
Her next order of business was setting up the trap that would ensnare the cheater. Part of this was dressing as enticingly as possible. Everything she owned was fairly modest, but she found a houndstooth pencil skirt that shaped her legs quite nicely, and black bra that caught the eye when she left her white button-up mostly open.
Another part of this was setting up her dorm. The small room needed to be arranged to make sure she had the appropriate space for all the evening's activities. When she was looking through her closet, she had also found a few scarves, gifts from her grandma that she hadn't worn. These she set on the desk.
