Ravensdagger_Love_Crafted

Love Crafted

Annotation

To Enter Five Peaks Magical Academy you must have a familiar. Abigail hoped for a bird, maybe an owl like her best friend's, or a cuddly cat or loyal hound. She would have been happy with a particularly smart toad, even.

Instead she got you.

Cover art by: Zoufii

Love Crafted

Prologue

Chapter One

Omake One

Omake Two

Chapter Forty-Six

Interlude One

Omake Three

Afterward

Spreading the Tentacular Glory — Now With 100% More Auditory Hallucinations!

Moving to KU!

Love Crafted

Prologue

There was a brilliance to Fivepeaks at dawn, an interplay of light and fading shadow that was, as far as Abigail was aware, unique to the city.The royal palace had its great clock, the dials lit from behind by a thousand glass tubes filled with Aether. It was the first thing to catch the sun’s light as it slipped over the horizon, like a beacon announcing that morning had arrived and it was time to start moving or else start plotting excuses for why one was tardy to work.Then, as the sun rose, the lamp men would move across the city, the vanguard of the working class, each one shutting off the street lights with a touch to their circles. They always started near the Parliament building on the second peak and worked their way down, lights flicking off like twinkling stars just ahead of the wash of morning sunlight.Across Fivepeaks, on one of the tallest hills, the Academy would open its gates and the twin braziers on either side of the school would burst to life. They were bright beams of eldritch light that turned the mundane stone building into something ethereal, something that was beyond the normal sort of magic everyone and their mother used every day. Statues would come to life, paintings would begin to move, and the school prepared to receive a thousand inquisitive minds.As the sun finally crested the horizon for good and lit up the fields that were once forests, the other mounts would awaken. The Conclave of the Inquisition remained dark, the entire complex hidden from the light by a towering mound of stone, but the Merchant’s Hill, where Abigail worked from sunrise to sunset, didn’t shy from the light. Red lamps sputtered out with sparks of wasted Aether and neon lights fizzed to life with a press of a thumb and a bit of focus.There was a strange sort of quiet in the early morning hours. The streets outside were busy with the hubbub of morning crowds and the grinding of rune carts across the cobbles, but those noises were distant, easily forgotten save for the occasional rattle of glass jars when a cart rushed by.The city was lively, magic circles flashing to life and leaving the air smelling of ozone and lightning, the Familiars of a thousand mages rushing ahead of their masters to the Academy on the hill, and gossiping shopkeeps walking in tight knit groups to their stores.All that energy and life was locked behind a thick wooden door.Two girls stood around a circle painted onto the floor, lit only by lamp light. “It stinks,” Abigail said, her nose scrunching up as she inspected her handiwork.Her friend shrugged one shoulder, an unladylike gesture that would have been inappropriate in any other circumstance. “It’ll work,” she said. “I don’t think you made any mistakes.”“Yeah,” Abigail said as she traced the circle with a discerning eye one more time. Each reagent was in its place. The sulphur in a non-reactive glass dish, the alum flower in a neat pile, the lime and lunar caustic in their positions. There were other ingredients of course, more than she had ever seen in a single circle before.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.Then, in the middle of it all, on a slightly raised pedestal, was a smaller circle, connected to the first by lines of salt and magnesia. That’s where the more esoteric ingredients rested. Five points, each with a smaller circle. One had a drop of her blood, another the hair of a virgin maiden (easy to obtain, that), then a dollop of aged ent sap. There was a bit of gold in the form of a medallion she had found and which she hoped wouldn’t be lost in the casting, and finally a single unicorn cock, freshly butchered.“Are you sure?” she asked again, eyes looking up from the intricate spell and to her friend. “Daphne, I’ve never cast anything this strong before,” she whined.Her friend smiled, just a twitch of the lips and a folding in the corner of her eyes. “Don’t worry Abi, I’m here for you. And I’m sure it’ll be fine. The spell’s a bit old, but it’s usable, if non-standard.”“That’s not helping,” Abigail said. She shifted on the spot a little, weight going from side to side as she hesitated even more. It was, of course, too late to back out. The ingredients were laid out already, some would be lost if she tried to store them now.Daphne stepped closer and wrapped Abigail in a tight hug, only having to bend down a little to do it. “It’ll be fine. There’s always a bit of leeway with these things. My summoning went super well. You love Archie. Do this right and you’ll have an Archie of your own, then it’ll be super easy to get into the Academy.”“Archie was summoned with a proper circle,” Abigail said. “And you had supervision.”Dahne snorted, an indelicate gesture that had her nose scrunching up. “I’m supervising you.”“By a professional,” Abigail shot back.“Ouch. Abi, you’re being mean,” Daphne said. She let go of the hug to poke Abigail in the ribs. “Now push some Aether into that thing and let’s watch the sparks fly.”Abigail nodded, took a deep breath, and hesitated just a little more.Then, when she heard Daphne sighing from her place near the wall, she fell onto her knees next to the circle, reached in, and pushed her bare hand onto the cold ground. Eyes closing, she pushed with all of her will. Her hopes, her dreams, all depended on that one moment.And then she summoned you.

You float in the Void. In the Darkness where Light doesn’t dwell and where only the things that are In Between lie.Meaning is a concept that is as transient here as spring gales. Causality is optional. Willpower dictates the flow of the space between spaces.There is a tug, a pull, a calling from across what Mortals and Organics would only understand as a great, unfathomable distance.It awakens you.

Chapter One

You are vast, larger than any mere mortal could hope to conceive of, and yet the one calling you, your summoner, wants you to squeeze into a form so small as to be insignificant. The little mortal asks for the impossible with a sort of blind faith that, at its base, amuses you.A twist, a turn, and mass, insofar as you have mass, is compressed. Space is transitory, it does as you wish. With a scream, physics reels from your irreverence to its laws. It batters at what you are doing but that is as easy to ignore as a faint stench.Between one blink and the next you are an entity of the void no longer.

* * *

The ceiling has wooden beams, some of them marred by smoke stains and soot. You know this, because you are on your back on the floor, which affords you an excellent view.You wrinkle your nose at the smell of burning sulfur and something sickly sweet, then you wrinkle your nose again just because you can. You have a nose now. This is rather novel.Of course, that’s all perfectly normal. You are a being made flesh now. You have bits that are squishy over hard parts. It’s all quite disgusting and probably unsanitary. It’s no wonder that mortals are so mortal. One small impact is all it would take to rend this sack of meat you are calling home apart.There’s a noise. You know this because you have ears.You wiggle your limbs and, after a moment of not really moving, decide that your patience for mortal flesh limbs has already reached its end. You reach into the space between spaces for more of yourself and pull a fraction of a fraction of your essence into the mortal coil. There’s a tearing sound, and a splash.Warmth runs across your back and you see inky black blood pooling out around you.That’s probably bad. But at least now you are no longer limited to a mere four limbs. Your new limbs sprout out of your back like the wings of an Angel. Though unlike those weaklings your wings are black, and wiggly, and a little bit slimy with your blood. They are also boneless and featherless.They’re tentacles.Tentacle wings.Angels don’t have anything on you.Now equipped properly, you let yourself go limp as your tentacles spear into the floor and raise you up to your feet.There are two meaty fleshbags in the room. They are small, with delicate little bones covered in mostly beige flesh. One has long brown fur atop her head and the other black. Perhaps the fur means somethings. You will have to look into it and make sure any fur you have tells the mortals that you are not to be trifled with.One of the girls steps forwards, the shorter of the two and the one you suspect is your summoner. She opens the hole in her face and noises come out.You blink at the strange, guttural sounds. This is a problem. But of course, you have a simple solution. You just need to tear the knowledge out of your summoner’s head. Everything these mortals know is stored in the meaty organ in their head. A terribly inefficient way of going about things but they’re primitive mortals, so what can one expect?Bringing one of your tentacles back, you prepare yourself to spear through your summoner’s skull to get to the juicy brain matter within when you pause. Would going through the skull break the summoner?Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.Best to merely apply pressure atop the summoner’s head and extract the knowledge of their meat flapping language that way. It is not nearly as efficient, but it will work.You step forward, then the world shifts and you brand new nose twinges as it meets the floor with a meaty smack.Curse physics! It is attempting to foil your amusement by dragging your squishy meat body to the ground.Walking cannot be difficult if the mortals are doing it, but the only two you see are standing still and not assisting you by presenting the art of waking in an easy to digest fashion. Very well, you don’t need their assistance anyway. Your tentacles bring you back to your feet.Raising one arm up, you reach for your summoner’s head.You feel the muscles on your face drawing your brows together as you reach harder. Perhaps you cannot touch your summoner’s head because you are not standing at your full height? That must be it, you decide.You stand to your full height....You stand to your full height.You blink your fleshy meat eyes, then look down.The ground is very near. You look back up. Your summoner is taller than you are. A whole two heads taller.This is a problem.But all problems have solutions. And the best solutions always involve tentacles. You wrap your fleshy tentacles around the beams of the ceiling, then push off the ground with others until you are suspended in the middle of the room. Your summoner cowers away from your form which is unacceptable. You wrap a tentacle around her waist in a fleshy cuddle of muscle and drag her close.You are now taller than your summoner, the perfect height to reach out and...Hand meets head. Tendrils that are only partially in this realm and in this time scour through your summoner’s mind, skipping past boring things until the parts that dictate speech and the knowledge of how to move the flaps on your face to communicate are found.Ah, you were supposed to use your tongue. That is what the small, inefficient tentacle in your face is for.Disappointing.You clear your throat as you remove your hand from your summoner’s head then gently and reluctantly lower her back to the ground. The moment she’s out of your grasp, you feel a lack, as it you had accidentally bumped into a black hole and lost a bit of yourself.You will have to see if wrapping your summoner in even more tentacles will fix the issue, but that is a problem (which can, again, be fixed with a liberal application of tentacle) for another time. You are nothing if not a paragon of self-control.“Hello,” you say.“Ah,” the girl says in return. Truly, your summoner is lacking in many things. It would be best if you kept her safe, cocooned in a whole pile of your flesh— you shake your meat head and refocus. She is about to continue. “Hi there,” she says. “My name’s Abigail.”A name.Yes. You will need one of those. And then you’ll need to discover why this mortal called upon you.

Omake One

You wake up and smack your lips a few times, then turn over so that you can go back to napping. You don’t know what time it is yet, or what woke you from naptime, but whatever it is can wait.A quick check of the room before you fall back asleep reveals something that wasn’t there before.There’s a box, and it's floating before you in mid-air.You look down to make sure Abigail is still napping next to you, and yes, there she is all bundled up against your side as is right and proper.The box is still there when you look up, just a thin blue rectangle dangling in the air.Well, whatever, you were napping. You try to go back to sleep, but there’s a noise like a tiny bell being rung that wakes you up. You stare at the box. It jiggles in time with another ring of the bell.

Congratulations!Through Good Luck and Hard Work you have gained the Skill: Sleeping!​

You wonder what the box is on about. You are Dreamer. You’re the best at sleeping. You can’t say that you invented sleeping, that’s Uncle Hypno’s boast, though you think Uncle Azathoth might have been first, but still, you perfected the art of the nap.The box has made you suffer enough. A pair of tentacles reach out to grab it. You are going to take the box and gently put it away. And if it does not listen, then you'll have no choice but to resort to eating.Your tentacles pass right through.Now that’s annoying. You shift a little, and the box shifts with you.Ah, so it’s tied to your eyesight. Which means the box is in your eyes.You find a nice barb-tipped tentacle and you pull your eyes out. They are nice and squishy, like grapes but more wet. Once you’re done eating your eyes, you... well, you don’t really need to close your eyes to sleep now, do you? Bonus!Then you notice that the box is still there, floating in your sight even though you have no eyes.