Rituals of Samhain

"Can you make him wear pants?" Tabby asked with a huff.

Nea looked at Conach who attempted to help clean by stacking books on the side of the room. She'd not seen him much from behind. The unusual tail emerged from the base of his spine above a pair of firm buttocks between which she saw the faint shadow of his genitals. "I don't have men's pants with a tail hole in them," Nea said. "Conach? Do you wear clothes?"

"Of course," he said. "I told you. You yanked me away from the nymphs. My clothes are beside the Isenhern Lake if some little sprite hasn't stolen them already. Just magic me up something, fashionable."

"Can I do that? I don't have a spell for it or anything. Tabby?"

The other witch sighed. "Yes, you can do that. Faebinds create permanent conduits of magical energy. You two share it between you. From the way I found you when I got back in, I'm guessing you're chock full of it. You don't need spell circles or invocation words any more, Nea. It's like using a soulstone or a blood siphon. The energy is already there, you must channel it with your will."

Conach frowned at Tabby. Since their short introduction, he'd remained cold toward the other witch and grew irritable when she mentioned things like soulstones or blood siphons. "She's right, I think. Picture me in a fine suit, and it will weave itself around me. Go ahead, give it a try."

Nea took a moment to assess Conach's frame. She closed her eyes, focused on an image, and felt the energy moving through her. From thin air, strands of linen sprang into being, drifting around like a school of fish. They knit together surrounding Conach's legs and slowly formed a pair of loose fitted trousers with little more than a drawstring fly to hold them on. At the back, a generous space stayed open for his tail while covering the majority of his ass snugly. Other ribbons of pure white snapped from nothing, forming a loose fitted shirt that hung open as it sat easily around his shoulders. The energy in the air subsided, and Nea opened her eyes. She jumped up and down in place, her swollen breasts heaving up and down.

"You made him look like a beach bum," Tabby said. "But at least his dick isn't waggling around any more. Now do something for yourself."

Conach shook his head, "Ah, that's more my department." He looked at Nea with the same appraising glare she'd given him moments before. He snapped his fingers. The air around Nea shimmered. As it did, clothes formed around her. A black, flared skirt hung close to her ass while a bright red tank top pulled tight against her breasts, thin strings of fabric keeping it on. Green, striped stockings appeared on her legs. After a few seconds of nothing, a small, pointed hat poofed into existence, settling gently on Nea's red hair. "I like it," he said.

Nea twirled around looking like a cross between the Wicked Witch of the West and Stripper-gram. She hoisted up the soft skirt, flashing Conach. "No underwear?"

"Could say the same for your choices," he gave a gesture to his crotch, the outline of his manhood remained entirely visible. "I may not remember most of my Da's lessons on the subject of being Faebound, but I do remember most of the perks. I get to choose what you look like while you get to choose what I look like. Hence, I gave you a little more tits and ass. Hope you don't mind."

"No, I love it." She hefted her new cleavage up, causing her breasts to strain against the thin fabric. "I think they're big enough to titty fuck."

"That's the idea," he grinned.

"How come I look like a cartoon witch, albeit a sexy one? Do you have cartoon witches in Fae?"

Conach's face screwed up, "Cartoon? No. This is in your head of what a witch should look like. I simply sexied it up."

"Can you read my mind?"

"No, flashes of images that's all."

Nea concentrated on a picture of herself, legs splayed and ass up. "How about that one?" He didn't answer, but she saw the front of his pants shift.

"Ahem," Tabby glared at them both. "If you could focus on the task at hand and flirt some other time. What do you know about these rituals?"

Conach raised his chin and looked away from Tabby with a quiet click of his tongue.

Tabby turned to Nea. "Make him answer."

"I'm not going to

make

him do anything. That's not how it works, Tabby. Nymphomancy isn't about control and power. It's about the creation of joy and fulfillment."

"Why is the blood witch here?" Conach said, disdain in his voice. "Turn her into a ferret and be done with her."

Nea wheeled around on him. "And you, what's your problem with her? She's my friend...sort of. And I need all the help I can get."

Conach sucked at his teeth, tail flicking irritably. "Her kind spent centuries trapping Fae and forcing the bindings, using them as slaves. They are the reason the doors were shut in the first place. She is what my people are afraid of. Having her here at all is an affront."

Tabby slid her hands up her arms and stared at Conach with cold eyes. "I am not like them," she said. "A year in Fae is a score of them in our world. Hundreds of years have passed since my ancestors and your...father, apparently, had dealings. Perhaps the August Coven remember something about what you're saying, but I was born in 1990, not 1650. Nea and I are the

only

witches born in the past century. And while she chose a dead, theoretical magic, I chose one that actually works."

"It is still an affront," Conach said, simply. "Brutish and vulgar. What would you do for an ounce of my blood, witch? With it, you could burn a whole city to the ground with a wave of your hand."

For a moment, Tabatha's eyes drifted, as if she saw something she'd always wanted to see. Nea shifted uncomfortably. Moments ago, they'd been playing silly dress up, but now her old friend and new fae looked on the verge of murder. A curious question entered her head, "What's stronger?"

Conach's eyes softened as he looked at her. "Black magic is potent, but few mortals have power greater than those possessing one of the consecrated Faebinds. Our bond was created by Titania herself. Through our connection, you have access to all the power of Fae."

Nea nodded and turned to Tabby. "How about it?"

The other witch's face pinched in her usual irritated glare. "How about what?"

"Become a nymphomancer, of course. I can share the power, right Conach?"

"Uh, yes, in a manner of speaking," he said, a little flustered.

Tabby did not look amused. "I've dedicated my whole life to my art. My scrying is the best in the world. I get my sacrifices from kill lots anyway. And I am not the issue here. Samhain, the end of the world, the rituals?"

Nea thought it best not to press her friend further. "She's right. For the moment, we need to focus on getting our plan together. Conach, where do we start?"

The Fae puffed out his lips in a big sigh as he rocked on his heels. "Uh, well, there are seven rituals. The seventh itself is the festival of Samhain, so that one you don't really have to worry about. The other six all involve the seals on the Morrígan's realm door. Let's see, Blood. That one's easy to remember. Consumption, to ward off the effects of the feast on Samhain or something. Spirit? — We need the tablet." He drifted over to a closet and pulled it open expectantly. Peering into the cluttered mess of clothes he said, "This...is not a magic door. Is it?"

Nea shook her head. "Not that I know of. The only magic door I've had is the one you came through."

"Do you not own this house?"

She laughed. "No, I can barely afford the rent."

"Hmph. You need a place you own. It will manifest as the nexus of your power. It doesn't have to be much. I think mother worked out of a hovel in the woods."

Before Nea could answer, Tabby did, "Your grandmother's place. You own it."

"It's a rotten husk that's dangerous to walk inside," Nea said. "And it's in Tennessee."

"Immaterial, right, Conach?" Tabby asked.

"The blood witch is right. I can transport us most places in this realm, so long as you know where we're going. As long as it still has four walls and a roof, and you have the spiritual ownership of the place, then it will become whatever you need it to be. You can even make it look like this place. You know, small...er, cozy."

"We need to work on your tact," Nea said. "Fine. How do we do this?"

"Concentrate on the place," he said, taking her hands in his. "Think of anything you can about it. The way the building looks, the roads and paths around it, the smell you remember when you were last there." He flicked his eyes to Tabby. "Are we bringing her?"

"Yes, Conach," Nea said, growing impatient with the little rivalry.

Before Tabby could protest, his tail wrapped around her hips, yanking her close to them. The tail moved, wrapping around the three of them and pulling them tight together. Nea couldn't avoid noticing Tabby's flushed cheeks and hurried breath. She suspected being close to Conach was enough to get anyone going. He provoked sexuality in everything around him. Tabby tried to keep her eyes away from either of them, choosing to tuck her chin down against her chest. Nea shut her eyes and gripped her hat. The old house bloomed in her memory. She expected to remember little, but as she concentrated, the memories came to life. She remembered her grandmother's garden, the small archway leading up the hill, the black exterior paneling, and the high Gothic windows. It always looked like a witch's house, she realized.

They all felt a sudden weightlessness, as if they'd become untethered by gravity. Immediately following it was a hard push. They hurtled through space and time. Even with her eyes closed, she could see a blur of light racing past her. It lasted only a few seconds before they jerked to a halt, without actually having moved at all. Nea opened her eyes to see the looming shadow of her grandmother's house. Tabby almost fell over, but Conach held her up with his tail. He put his arm around Nea, "Home at last."

***

They made their way up to the dark house. Tabby followed behind them on shaky legs as Nea dealt with a strange feeling of dread in her stomach. As a kid, she'd always thought her grandmother's house felt haunted. Looking at it in the middle of the night after jumping half across the world, she felt certain it was. "So how does this work?"

Conach shrugged, "My understanding is that the Faebinds get mystical houses with rooms of necessity. Wherever you call home becomes enchanted, almost like a living thing. It fills with hallways and rooms for any purpose you could imagine. One of them has your door to the between worlds, another will be the room with the tablet in it. It should present itself as soon as you ask for it."

"Did you not pay attention in 'how to be Faebound' class?" Tabby hissed from behind them.

The fae began a sneer, but let it slide away as Nea caught his eye. "My mother and father told me stories about their time being Faebound. All the great homes of Fae once worked like this house should, but then the magic dried up. If you've thought it difficult to be a mortal without magic, you should try it after using it to be immortal for eons. The greater Fae have magic beyond the need of things like nymphomancy, but lesser ones, who thrived off of small pacts with humans...well, it hasn't been a pleasant time."

They reached the door, and Nea worried for a moment about her keys being back in her apartment. Remembering her new font of power, she simply grabbed the handle and listened to the locks click open. As they did, a shimmer went over the outside of the house. The chipping paint smoothed and took on a sheen. Rotted wood regrew into solid timber. Crumbling brick solidified, broken windows glazed over, and the patchy grass filled in. "That's a start," Conach said, encouragingly.

Stepping through the front door, a wave of musty, rotten smell greeted them. The interior looked almost exactly as Nea remembered it. She inherited the house four years earlier, visited it a few times to remove some items of sentimental value, and otherwise left it undisturbed. A faded pink couch sat on one wall across an old box television set. The walls showed faded spots where old frames had hung for decades. The carpet exuded a wet smell which drew everyone's attention to the ceiling, searching for a water stain that wasn't there. "How come this isn't changing?"

Conach opened a coat closet near the door, looked inside, and shut it again. "Hmm, maybe you're holding on to the memory of what it was a little to much. Imagine what it should be and that's what it'll become. Is that a hallway?"

"Yeah, goes back to the bedrooms."

"Let's check there, then."

The witches followed Conach, each of them eyeing his ass in the dim hallway. As they reached the first door, which should have led to a meager child's bedroom, Nea realized the hallway looked longer than it should. It also split at the far end with corridors leading both left and right. Conach opened the door with a flourish, and a blast of cold air and snow flurries flooded through. He shut it as quickly. "Not that one," he said, brushing the melting ice off his new clothes.

"Wait, where the fuck does that go?" Nea asked.

"Somewhere cold, by the look of it," Tabby answered, still sour-faced from their journey.

"Let me rephrase," Nea said, rolling her eyes at the other witch. "Why is there a door that goes to somewhere in the middle of a blizzard."

"Active portals," Conach said. "It's how you get anywhere in Faerie without getting lost."

He opened the next door in the hallway. For a moment, it looked like a dark room. The three of them peered inside while Nea groped for a light switch. Something moved in the corner. Nea didn't see it, but she went from vague curiosity to paralyzed fear in the matter of seconds. She

knew

the thing crawling toward her would kill them, but she knew it in a way of absolute certainty, the way she knew the sun would rise. It was an immutable fact that doom had sighted them and moved slowly toward their brutal end. Nea's limbs turned icy cold, as life drained out of her. Her hand pawed for Conach, not for some magical solution, but for one last bit of contact before their end. Her eyes strained to see in the darkness, desperate to know how much longer she had to wait before the thing struck.

Tabby grabbed them both around the neck, yanking them back and slamming the door shut. She uttered a phrase under her breath and the knob froze over with tar. "Shit," she said. "What the hell was that thing?"

Conach's dark skin had drained a hue lighter. "Something very, very angry about being locked in that place for a long time. Seems our predecessors kept some nasty company. Nea, are you alright?"

The cold in her limbs faded, and she tried to put away the idea of the unseen creature altogether. "I'll be fine. Startled, that's all. Can it get out?"

"No," Conach said. "The doors only open for us." His eyes flicked down the hallway. "Still, we should be a bit more wary about sticking our heads through doors. At least until the house responds better to our presence."

They moved further into the interior. Though they remained alert and ready to face another horrendous threat, the next four doors held nothing of the sort. The first opened to a small sitting room that seemed to be nothing more than that. The next led to an attic filled with corn husk dolls. Tabby suggested it belonged to a witch, but they didn't investigate further. The third, a room sized apothecary, excited the two witches greatly, but Conach insisted they continue searching. And the fourth contained a single room with a hand crafted wicker cot at its center. Though none of them saw anything amiss or felt the overbearing presence of doom brought to life, they still felt uncomfortable.

"Something is wrong," Conach said as Tabby put another tar lock on the cot room. "The house doesn't like us or it's confused."

Nea had spent most of the time exploring trying to focus on what she wanted from the house, but as she watched Tabby and listened to Conach, an idea occurred to her. "Could it be trying to appease two witches?"

Conach considered the idea, "Possibly. It shouldn't, but this place has been unused for a so long. Maybe it's forgotten how to recognize its own mistress."

Nea pointed to the next door. "Tabby, you open it. See what's inside."

The other witch shrugged and moved to the door. She opened it to reveal a library teeming with books, each of which radiated a dark energy all three of them could sense. "The Agathoth Collection," Tabby said, breath catching in her throat. "Nea, do you know what this is? It's the entire knowledge of black magic stuffed into one room. Agathoth hid it centuries ago. We've been using scraps, bits of nothing we've kept like precious jewels. With this, I could..."

She turned around to see the worried looks on Nea and the fae. The former spoke, "We can't both be mistress of this house, Tabatha." Nea kept her face rigid. As much as she'd wanted to bind a fae, Tabatha had wanted resources like what waited beyond the doorway. It was the other witch's dream ready for the taking.

Tabby turned and looked at the room with a forlorn gaze. She sighed, "You're right. Honestly, the whole thing should burn. Agathoth hid it in the first place because it could destroy the world, which is the opposite of what we're trying to do. With some hesitation, she reached forward and pulled the door shut. As she did, the built tension between the trio faded. "Guess I pass into the West and diminish, as they say," she said with a weak smile. "Now what? Do I tell the house I'm not interested? Hear that house? I am not your mistress."

They waited for something to happen. Nea tried another door. It opened to a broom closet which spilled out half a dozen brooms into the hallway before they could get it shut again. "Guess that's not enough," she said once they crammed the last one back inside.

"Fine, I'll do it," Tabby said. She went to the next room, closed her eyes to concentrate, and then opened it to reveal a small, comfortably sized room with a massive bed in its center.

"This looks more like it," Conach said, striding into the bedroom. "Could function as the master bedroom, don't you think?"

Nea nodded as she looked around. Turning to Tabby, she asked, "Why this room?"

"Because this is where you're going to make me your nymphomantic apprentice."

***

"You said not twenty minutes ago that you didn't want to give up your specialization," Nea said, arms crossed as she stood in front of the bed. Conach rolled around on the soft mattress behind her being distinctly unhelpful in the discussion. "You've spent your entire life studying black magic, and you're ready to give it up after following us around for a little while."

Tabby unbuttoned her shirt and slid off her shoes. "I didn't want to give it up without a good reason. I wasn't convinced your nymphomancy was real. The past twenty minutes have been revelatory, and it's not like when we were picking specialties I

wanted

to spend the rest of my life digging around in guts and making blood circles. Nea, it was what worked at the time. I made do with no expectation of him popping into our world."

Conach gave a little wave, propped up on his elbows. "I think it's a good idea, personally. Three is always better than two when it comes to witch magic."

"I'm not — look I'm not against the idea. I simply don't want it to be something she regrets."

Tabby laughed. "What would I regret? Getting big tits or helping to save the world?

Nea crossed her arms. "It's not a one time thing, Tabby. It's all the time. Sex — day in and day out. You've been a prude since the day I met you. Your bravado about it now isn't fooling me. And it won't fool the magic either. Nymphomancy isn't only about having sex, it's about

feeling

it down to the core of your soul. Rubbing yourself off is striking a match. Having an orgasm so powerful you can't see straight for an hour, that's the inferno you need to do anything. It's about desire and connection and the euphoria of joined ecstasy."