Fredozy
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Chapter 63: Clavicula Vinculis Arcana
🕑 Added 2025-08-20 09:29:28 +0000 UTCThe next morning, Kai stirred awake in his bed, his eyes adjusting to the pale light filtering through the curtains. As his vision cleared, he noticed Alice sitting in a chair across the room. She wore nothing but an oversized long-sleeved shirt and her underwear, her legs folded up on the chair as though she were curled into herself. She was biting her nail, her gaze distant, her mind clearly tangled in something else.
Kai’s voice broke the quiet, propped himself up on an elbow. “How long have you been there?”
Alice looked up, caught off guard as if he’d dragged her out of a deep current. “I couldn’t sleep,” she admitted softly.
Before he could reply, she cut him off her voice taut and brittle. “Can it really be done?”
He blinked at her, confused. “Can what be done?”
She stared at him, as if he should already know what she was talking about.
“The beast,” she clarified, her voice trembling. “You said you’re the simple solution. Can you really stop him?”
The words sank into him, and he finally understood what she meant. Kai sat up, dragging the blanket off himself, and leaned forward to the edge of the bed and planted his feet on the floor.
“So that’s what this is about.”
Alice’s voice sharpened, trembling at the edge.
“Can you?”
Kai smirked faintly, letting his sarcasm carry him.
“Well, if I screw it up, at least I’ll die pretty, right?” He tried to mask the heaviness of the question with sarcasm. But when he caught the look on her face it was serious, almost desperate, his smirk faltered. He sighed and straightened. The sharp edge of his tone softened. “I think I can,” he said finally. Then, with a wry smile, he added, “Besides, we won’t know unless we try.”
Alice still looked tense, her worry evident in the way her fingers twisted against her shirt. “How would we do it?”
That was enough to draw a grin from Kai, one that carried a devious glint. “Now that,” he said, “is the fun part.”
---
Later, the two of them made their way toward the library. As they walked, Kai spoke aloud, half to himself and half to Alice. “Well, first, we need to lay down a trap for him. Of course, making that many traps might end up looking like a paranoid lunatic’s art project… it might take about a thousand traps stacked together. Might need a bigger library.” His sarcasm hung in the air.
Alice frowned. “And what could we possibly use? I’ve gone through most spells on campus, and none of them are strong enough to even hold the beast, let alone trap him. And even if one existed, it couldn’t be performed, not with the delicate nature of the requirements.”
“Let me worry about the requirements after I’ve seen them, okay?You just tell me what’s on the menu, and I’ll pick something sharp enough to cut with.” Kai shot her a reassuring smile, brushing off her doubt. “Now, tell me everything you have on capturing beings of pure magical nature.”
Alice stopped mid-step, her brow furrowed. “I’ve gone through all the binding spells in the library. None of them are strong enough to hold him for long. And even if we manage that, we’d still need a way to kill him permanently.”
Kai’s head tilted. “What do you mean by permanently?”
“I mean,” she said, voice lowering, “we’d have to make sure his body is more than just dead. His body has to be broken beyond anything resembling recovery.”
“Hm. More than dead.” He nodded slowly, digesting her words. “Got it. And… you wouldn’t happen to know any spell that could achieve that feat, would you?”
Her hesitation said enough. “The binding spell we might be able to put together. But the offensive spell… there is one I can think of.”
The moment Kai saw her expression, he scoffed. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. You mean the same spell that turned Julia into a Niffin, don’t you?”
Alice fidgeted, then nodded reluctantly.
Kai sighed heavily. “ Fantastic. That’s exactly what I need another Niffin running around. Tell you what, let’s just focus on the binding first, then we’ll worry about turning him into cosmic ash”
---
By the time they reached the library, Alice already had two specific tomes tucked under her arm. She dropped them onto a table and flipped them open. “Here it is,” she said, pointing at one of the pages.
Kai leaned over. “What exactly am I looking at?”
“It’s called the Clavicula Vinculis Arcana the Key of Arcane Chains. A high-end ritual, capable of binding complexities. Think of it as a freezing charm but expanded, amplified, and adapted into a binding ritual. It can paralyze or immobilize something long enough for us to… do whatever we want.”
“Like kill or neutralize them?” Kai asked, studying the page.
She nodded. “Exactly.”
Without another word, Alice grabbed a piece of chalk from her satchel or perhaps from nowhere in particular and began clearing out tables and chairs to create space. Kneeling on the floor, she started sketching out a diagram across the tiles: concentric circles intersected by runes of containment, their outer edges reinforced with geometric symmetry. At each of the four cardinal points, she inscribed sigils designed to anchor the spell into the room itself, pulling on the structure of the library to act as a cage.
“The mechanics are delicate,” she explained while working. “The outer circle provides the containment field, while the inner symbols act as the locking points. They draw on the surrounding ley lines, redirecting ambient magical energy into the structure. But the core of the ritual requires something raw to power it up something emotional, something primal.”
Kai crouched beside her, eyeing the intricate pattern. “And what exactly will fuel this? A spell this dense doesn’t just run on goodwill.”
Alice didn’t answer, her silence louder than words.
“Oh, I see.” He smirked knowingly. “You intend to fuel it with your rage, don’t you?”
She looked away, refusing to meet his eyes.
Kai’s thoughts darkened as he watched her work. Now that he thought about it, this almost resembled the binding spell Julia had tried to use against Reynard in the series. Julia’s hatred and trauma had fueled the spell, giving it force. Strong emotions amplified magic that much was always true.
But Julia’s spell had failed, not simply because Martin was taken away back to Fillory, but because Reynard’s resistance was on another level. He wasn’t just a god he was a trickster god. His magic was slippery, chaotic, and near-impossible to pin down. Mortal magic, no matter how amplified, unraveled in his presence without divine reinforcement. Julia lacked a divine power source; she had no artifact, no god-killing blade, no deity lending their strength.
And that was why the spell had failed.
Now, watching Alice draft her own version of the ritual, Kai couldn’t help but frown. If Reynard had been untouchable because of his god-level resistance, what would this mean for Fogg? Now a beast, a creature on par with divinity itself and perhaps even worse than Reynard because of his adaptive mind. A being elevated and maybe even worse than a god and twisted into something else.
‘Then again I wonder if that would hold…”
