Back to the room.

After parting ways with my old friend, I reentered my room to find that Makenzie was fast asleep on her bed. I was more than satisfied to see that her top had been cropped per my request, and it wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding her massive bust as one of her tits was completely free as she lay on her back snoozing away.

I considered just groping it since it was out there and exposed to the world, but even if I was protected from repercussions both because of the commandment that gave me unlimited access to breasts and the commandment that made it so nobody’s opinion of me would ever worsen, I still would feel bad waking her up. I didn’t blame her for wanting to get an early night in after having to sit on that bus for hours, I was stiff and sort of tired myself, though not quite tired enough to sleep yet.

Instead, I wandered over to my desk and picked up the Libro Umbra again. This time I could be fairly certain that nobody would come to interrupt me, and I could go ahead and read through the notebook in its entirety. In fact, I went ahead and reread it from the beginning, in case I missed some minor details the first time. During this reread, I noticed that the phrasing was vague enough in the second commandment that it permitted me access to the chests of all goths, not just women. It didn’t specifically say “breasts”, it said “chests”. I supposed that was why I could get away with groping Ashley. In fact, none of the commandments specified gender, which was helpful.

Once again, that blank commandment stood out to me.

XI.

It was not only completely blank without even the imprint of letters on the page, it was followed by three lines of absolutely nothing. It wasn’t until my eyes wandered to the next page with the powers that the reason suddenly became clear as day. When I checked the boxes it actually gave me those powers, I didn’t have them until I checked the boxes meaning what I marked actually mattered. Then I realized the book was trying to clue me in on that the entire time, the whole thing was done in my handwriting.

That meant the reason the eleventh commandment was blank was because it was a custom one. I could write whatever I wanted there, and it would become a rule that every goth followed. However, while this revelation was truly amazing, I had to remember that I didn’t fully understand how this worked. This all was still far beyond the scope of what I would normally even consider possible, there was some really weird shit going on here to make this work, shit that I had no way of comprehending.

So, while in theory this might lead me to believe I could go off script and start writing things in the margins of the page or try to find an empty page to continue whatever I wanted, I was frankly afraid to do so. The very real possibility of writing myself out of existence by accident was at the forefront of my mind.

And all of this was just a roundabout internal justification for why I planned to only try and make use of the remaining three lines on the page. If I couldn’t fit a commandment idea in three, I needed to think of something else. Hell, if I made the commandments condensed enough, I might even be able to get away with two or three extra ones. And I would be sure to use pencil this time and hope pen wasn’t a hard requirement.

However, I moved on from this, because no ideas immediately came to me, and again, I wanted to keep reading the book until I knew everything about it.

The section immediately following the one titled “Your Miraculous Properties”, where I had committed myself to infinite stamina and urine, was titled “Gothic Rituals”.

This section outlines the details of gothic rituals available for you to perform at your discretion. The actual details of the rituals are left purposefully blank, so that you may decide what actions must take place. Once a ritual’s details have been written here, all members of the gothic faith will treat them as official and will know their steps to be divine and significant. Completion of the ritual will result in various effects upon the ritual’s subject which can range from the mundane or behavioral to supernatural effects of similar caliber to those outlined in the previous section.

That was fascinating. So, I could basically perform rituals, whose steps I got to come up with myself, to give people supernatural qualities or modify their behavior. That was pretty cool.

Those who are not part of the gothic faith, even those who witness these rituals personally, will not believe the results of these rituals to be supernatural or magical in nature, even if they are evidently so. Members of the cult shall know of their supernatural effects, but will be wholly supportive and accepting of them, no matter what the actual result may be.

The rituals must consist of steps that are achievable through mundane means even if the results are not mundane themselves. For example, a ritual may grant the ability to fly through supernatural means, but the ritual itself must only consist of non-supernatural and entirely achievable tasks for those who perform them, such as adorning with feathers or performing an interpretive dance of flight.

This seemed pretty straightforward, and it sounded like I might be able to use this to grant myself some of the powers I missed out on in the previous section.

In addition, while the effects of the ritual can be virtually anything, the subject of the ritual must be willing to partake in it and must give express consent to be involved, though they need not be fully aware of the exact implications of its completion, particularly in cases of personality modification. While you are required to be involved in every ritual in some way, you may not be the subject of a ritual.

Or not. That was fair enough I supposed, there wasn’t much point in making me only choose two powers if I could just give myself more later. Next in the notebook was an example ritual titled “Rite of Initiation”.

This ritual will initiate or convert another individual to the gothic faith, so that Jack Oswald Lantern may officially count them among his flock. Upon completion of this ritual, the subject will become a member of the gothic cult and shall obey all of its commandments without question.

Well it was a good thing not having chosen the “conversion” power wasn’t a complete oversight. I supposed the miraculous property would have just made it faster and easier. With this method it sounded like I would just have to get them to willingly take part in the ritual to join the cult. After this example ritual there was a large block of empty space. At first, I thought it was space to make a new ritual until I realized it was probably so I could outline the procedure for it. On the next page there was one more example ritual titled “Rite of Apostlehood”.

There will inevitably be those that Jack Oswald Lantern identifies as being wholly more significant to himself or to the gothic faith than others. This ritual may be performed to elevate them to the status of “apostles” in his “inner circle”. Goths who have been initiated into this union shall happily obey the commands and desires of their messiah, without regard and in direct preference to the rules outlined in the gothic commandments.

Oh. Oh. The sudden boner in my pants immediately liked this idea a lot. This ritual would basically convert anyone in the gothic faith into an obedient submissive. This changed quite a bit about how I wanted to run things, knowing I could just do that.

After this second example ritual I was delighted to find that there were three blank spots each just titled “Rite of” with nothing else, meaning I could come up with three whole rituals myself with any effects I wanted.

The pages after that were very interesting, and while I didn’t read them in their entirety, I did skim over them and discover that this final section encompassed the entire rest of the Libro Umbra leaving absolutely no blank pages at the end. This final segment was comprised of descriptions of what features, styles, and mannerisms were considered “goth”. Probably so I could have a good idea of who was in the faith and how faithful they were.

The fascinating part about this section was that I did not disagree with a single word of it. And in fact, it was written in the exact way I might write it if tasked with writing what I believed “goth” was. Meaning that I really didn’t need to read this part at all because my instincts would already be on point no matter what. I was still going to read it in case there were any surprises lurking in it, but not right now.

The excitement about being able to invent my very own commandments and rituals was too hard to ignore. I spent the next little while minutes brainstorming some ideas until I came up with something.