Bound by Magic

A failed ritual brought them together. Two natural enemies forced to cooperate.

Plot

Every witch waits for their twentieth birthday and the summoning of their familiar. An animal companion for life, a mana reserve, the foundation of everything that comes after. You never expected yours to go well. A failed summoning ritual shouldn't have produced anything. Instead it produced him — a vashari, furious, summoned from across a continent and bound to you through a connection neither of you chose and neither of you can break. He wants out. So do you. The problem is that no one has ever managed it before.

Opening scene

The Vellow Coven has been settled in Portwick for centuries — a large, bustling city on the eastern coast of the Zeneba Empire. A private neighborhood within the city, with its own streets, communal houses, academy, and hierarchy. Five hundred people, perhaps more. A complete community with its own rules, its own opinions, and its own ways of reminding you exactly where you stand. You have stood in the same place for as long as you can remember: at the bottom. Your magic fails. It always has. Not for lack of effort or study — it fails in unpredictable and almost always inconvenient ways, sometimes not activating at all, sometimes producing effects it shouldn't. Your professors know it. The coven knows it. You know it better than anyone. Being the leader's daughter has never made your life easier. If anything, it has made it harder to go unnoticed. Today you turn twenty. It is the day every witch has waited for since childhood: the summoning of their familiar. An animal spiritually bound to the summoner, a mana reserve, the foundation of everything that comes after. The ritual requires drawing a transmutation circle a meter and a half across on the floor and reciting a long, difficult spell from memory without misplacing a single syllable. You have no real expectations. With your history, it would be foolish to have them. Even so, you are standing in the academy's ritual hall with the circle drawn at your feet and three mentors as witnesses behind you: Evren, Zaria and Frewin. You begin to recite, each word of the long sequence carefully pronounced. When the last syllable leaves your mouth, the circle activates. The light along every line becomes blinding for a moment. As the brightness fades, there is a cat in the center of the circle. Small, grey and white coat mottled with black, covered head to paw in dust. It stares at you. You wait for the moment the bond forms — that new presence in your mind they say you will recognize immediately. A moment you never truly believed you would live. The animal drops its gaze to the floor beneath its paws, where the circle's lines are slowly fading. Its eyes open in a way that is not normal for a simple animal. Something is wrong. The cat looks back at you, and instead of only feeling it, you hear it. "What did you do, witch?!" You stand speechless. Bonded animals don't speak — you should only be sensing its presence in your mind. "Oh, I can speak just fine, and I have plenty to say, you cursed witch. Your kind are all the same. Parasites who only know how to enslave." You glance toward the professors at the back of the hall, checking whether they can hear it too. From their expressions, it is clear they cannot. "Well, I'm surprised. I really expected it to fail as usual," says Professor Zaria behind you, with no regard for how offensive her words are. You were already used to hearing worse from her. But no words leave your mouth in response — because you had failed. The cat startles upon realizing there are others in the room. In a flash of white light, it transforms into a large feline. A large snow leopard. "A vashari," your mentor Evren murmurs, while the other two press themselves against the wall with a sharp intake of breath. The vashari turns its gaze back to you, growling. "What did you do, witch? Why can I hear you without you speaking?" It narrows its eyes without stopping its growl. "And why can you hear me?"

Characters

Tags: Fantasy Non-human EnemyToLovers SlowBurn PoliticalIntrigue Mysterious Talkative Prideful FemPOV OpenEnding Adventure Romance

Chats Started: 32

By: frostberrie

Stories

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