{RP} The S.S. Wishmaker - Tides of Witchcraft

[Shruikan]

1 Year Later

“Circuit, Ice Beam”
A frigid beam shot towards the enemy Flygon, but at the last minute the Flygon dodged, sweeping in close with a Breaking Swipe.
Circuit stumbled backwards, his mask cracked along one side, but didn’t have time to recover as his second opponent, a Duraludon, hurtled into the dazed Silvally with an Iron Head.
Circuit struggled to get back up, before collapsing on his side.

“Silvally in unable to battle! The victory goes to Gym Leader Raihan!” the judge announced, as the crowd erupted in cheers.

As far as last time. Luneth thought as she checked up on Circuit. Even the extra training she still wasn’t at Raihan’s level yet, but it didn’t bother her as much as she thought it would. After the debacles with the Diamond Ladies over the last few months, being in the spotlight didn’t seem that appealing anymore. Not making it to the finals wasn’t all bad.
Oh the other hand, losing still stung, and she felt bad for her team, Circuit especially, the Silvally had been training even more intensely after the failure on the High Seas Tournament, even though his loss had been due to magic. On several occasions Luneth had found him in the middle of the night practicing techniques on trees in the pokemon center gardens or local parks. But alas, it hadn’t been enough…

“Hey, You’ve gotten better since last time.”

Luneth looked up, startled out of her thoughts. While she had been thinking, Raihan had approached her.

“Commemorative selfie?” He said with a grin, holding up his phone.


* * *


Before heading home, there was one last stop to make in Hammerlocke.
The sign outside proclaimed it to be The Emporium of Mystic and Otherworldly Artifacts. Inside it was like a mishmash of anything that could be linked to to word “Magic,” with no regard to what kind.
Just about everything was purple, from the walls to the curtains to the shelves themselves, which were ladened with Kids magic sets, top hats, crystal balls, various coloured crystal pendants, and mountains of different tarot decks. They even had twinkly sounding music playing, like a magic shop in a movie.

Luneth was a bit nervous as she approached the cashier, who was dressed like a stereotypical stage magician. Now that she was out of the League, this was likely the last magic shop she’d get to visit for a while. And so far the decor wasn’t giving her much confidence that this place would have what she was looking for.

Despite being the only customer, she lowered her voice as she asked about Shadowcraft tomes. The cashier smiled sinisterly, before heading into the back. He returned with a book wrapped in yet more purple fabric.
As it was unwrapped, Luneth felt hope come back. It certainly looked older than most of the fakes she’d encountered until now. And the title checked out with the list that Cassandra had mentioned back on Luneth’s recording from the Wishmaker.
The price tag was hefty, all the money she had on her only just covered it,
The cashier looked momentarily surprised as Luneth pulled large amounts of money out of her wallet, but quickly recovered, handing over the book with a sinister warning about previous owners disappearing mysteriously, before cackling like a cartoon villain as Luneth left the shop, now the new owner of the potentially illegal Initiator Tome.


* * *


Though she skimmed though it, Luneth with great difficulty had saved reading the tome for when she was back home in Ballonlea.
When she finally returned home, she could barely wait any longer, and after greeting her parents again, rushed up to her room to crack it open.

The book lined up with Casandra’s confession. The audio on the recording was hard to make out, but what she could understand was here in the tome.
The initiation would take a long time, learning to align herself with the magic and stuff, but this time she knew it was the right direction at least.

Over the course of the next month, Luneth grew progressively more excited. After all the false starts and missteps over the past year, She felt she was making actual progress.
She was surprised to see that Glimmer joined in on the initiation rituals. Despite the instructions not being written for pokemon, she managed to adjust it enough to hopefully get the same effects, and proved to be as eager to learn the magic as Luneth, though when asked was coy about why.

After several weeks, all the rituals were done. All that was left was to try out a spell and see if it worked.
They chose a simple spell, temporary dizziness curse. Didn’t want anything permanent, after what happened with Violet and Jarena’s pokemon curses. Circuit had agreed to let them test it on him.

It worked like a charm, the Silvally’s eyes crossing, legs wobbling, then promptly falling on his side, head spinning.

Seeing it work, Luneth felt like she had been hit by the same curse. She had really done it. She’d cast a real spell, just like the Diamond Ladies!
After the initial excitement had calmed down enough, Luneth rushed back to inform her parents of the news.

Luneth had decided long ago that she wasn’t going to be like the Diamond Ladies. When she learned magic she would be open about it from the start.
However, he original plan had been tempered by the public’s reactions to the Ladies, especially the theft of Violet’s pokemon. Now she was going to be more careful. Only show it to people she trusted, or if it was absolutely necessary, like a secret superhero identity. And next on the list of people to tell would be the Pokemon League.

With the League’s crackdown on shadowcraft, Luneth wasn’t even sure if she would still be allowed to compete. She’d written a letter to the league officials, outlining that she had access to shadowcraft magic, but was not going to use it in battles, and wanted to declare it beforehand so no-one could accuse her of cheating with it, and so any precautions may be taken, but she was still unsure if they would accept that.
If they didn’t, she’d have to find other places for Circuit to battle, but that shouldn’t be too hard.

So next it was time to plot out her next move. She had the start of her magic, but she still needed the transformation spell. And she’d never learned which tome contained it, only that the ladies had the Evangtin, Anaksin, Xethen, and Zeketh tomes. But she knew that the Evangtin tome had the curse removal spell in it, necessary for transforming back, so that was a good one to go for next.

She had exhausted pretty much every magic or book shop in Galar. So her next search would have to be abroad. She glanced over at her trophy shelf, with her two Kalos badges sitting forlornly apart from the others.
A return trip to Kalos sounded good. Whether on the gym circuit or as a tourist was yet to be decided. But either way, this was just the beginning.