lexicality | so there was this deck of cards, right

Jessica's house is cute. Lexi could see doing a lot of her homework here, listening to the calming chatter of gossip and getting help from Jessica on math (Bella's no help there) and helping Jessica on English. Forks isn't so bad. She doesn't mind the rain as much as Bella does.

Jessica goes to pee before they even start their assignment, after just introducing Lexi to her mom and dad as "one of Chief Swan's kids", and Lexi doesn't want to do work by herself or she wouldn't have come over in the first place. She sits on the couch and plunks her bag down and waits. There's a random deck of cards over there; she picks it up and flips through it. She's been trying to learn to bridge-shuffle.

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From:

lexicality

"What's that?" asks Lexi.

From:

cardistry

"We will be magically linked," the deck explains. It hovers in front of Lexi for a moment, and then disappears.

Half a heartbeat later, so does Lexi.

She is suspended weightlessly in the middle of a blank black void, lit in colourless greys by a sourceless light.

The voice of the deck says, filling the entire infinite space, "Unison complete."

From:

lexicality

"Is this part of the limitless power thing? I need to go talk to my sister," Lexi calls into the void. "Where am I?"

From:

cardistry

"I contain limitless power," says the voice.

It sounds... faintly amused.

From:

lexicality

"You said that already, you said I was going to have it, how do I use it?" Lexi complains.

From:

cardistry

"You are using it right now," the deck says uncomfortingly.

From:

incanted

Bella pushes the front door to the house open.

From:

cardistry

The house appears completely deserted, except for a human-looking figure with bright white hair sitting on the living room couch. He jumps up, startled.

"Grab him!" hisses the staff. "If we do this in here we'll blow the roof off and there's probably people in it outside the barrier!"

From:

incanted

Bella makes a disgruntled noise and lunges forward, seizing the white-haired guy by the front of his shirt.

From:

cardistry

The white-haired guy flails a little, and then the same rotating figure appears on the floor below them - two counter-rotating stars in a circle in two counter-rotating pentagons in another circle - and their surroundings blur, and they are in the middle of a forest, and the staff twists in Bella's hand to point at the white-haired guy's midsection and yells, "Fuck you!"

A blast of energy in the same every-colour as the staff's other magic lances out of it and slams into their opponent, knocking him loose from Bella's grip and propelling him twenty feet backward through one and a half trees. (The first disintegrates on impact; the second only cracks in half.)

From:

incanted

"...Now what?"

From:

cardistry

The stranger gets back up.

"Now we hit him again," says Brilliance, letting off another energy blast. "You can fly, by the way, that's probably gonna be important when he starts hitting back."

From:

incanted

"How do I fly?" exclaims Bella. There's little color-feathered wings extending from her heels like she's Hermes, but she can't feel them to even try flapping.

From:

cardistry

"Try wanting to," Brilliance snaps, and then the distant figure glows brightly and Brilliance hauls himself forward and fires another 'Fuck you!'.

From:

incanted

"I do want to!" shrieks Bella, trying to help out by aiming him so he doesn't have to wrench around in her hand like that. "I'm not going anywhere!"

From:

cardistry

"Did you pick a direction? 'Up' is a good place to start!"

Half a beat, and then another "Fuck you!" and another blast. It's unclear whether the words are some kind of incantation, or purely decorative.

From:

incanted

Bella wants to go up.

She shoots into the air, and has a moment's trouble controlling her speed, but after that it's like she was born to fly, and she's navigating quite handily, maintaining line of sight and aim while declining to present a still target.

From:

cardistry

Brilliance heaves a sigh of relief.

"Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!"

It's probably an incantation.

From:

incanted

Bella's certainly not going to interrupt him to ask. She flies. She points Brilliance at the rest of himself.

She didn't recognize Jessica's house, since she's never been there, so she isn't wondering where Lexi is.

From:

cardistry

In spare seconds between mystical profanities, Brilliance explains, "He talked somebody into unison. There's someone else in there. If we hit him hard enough to knock him out, they'll separate."

From:

incanted

"Will they be okay?"

From:

cardistry

"Probably," says Brilliance. "Except for the part where they almost helped destroy their own planet." And, yelled at the distant figure, "Fuck you!"

From:

incanted

Bella continues her fly-aim-fly-aim pattern. "Should I be doing anything I'm not?"

From:

cardistry

"I'm getting about two percent of the power output I'm used to," he frets. "I don't know what's wrong, but - it would probably help if you cast some of these with me. Sorry about the incantation," he adds.