Onto the next day, with Alesia.

Alesia felt like she was going to have a heart attack when Earnest put on the pajamas that she had used to masturbate earlier. Luckily for her dignity, he didn’t notice- or if he did, he had the restraint not to mention it. Alesia intensely hoped it was the former. Eventually, a little after he went to sleep, Alesia’s panic subsided and she was able to follow him into the land of dreams.

Perhaps it was because of the relatively poor sleep she had received during the trip and yesterday, but by the time she woke Earnest was already long gone, and she instead awoke to the sound of knocking at her door. Uh oh, had she slept in that late?

The somewhat unamused face of Morgan staring back at her told her yes. “I was told to find my assistant here? Are you quite ready?” This was the first time Morgan had shown Alesia anything other than dry amusement, and the sight of it was so unnerving that Alesia felt compelled to get herself ready as fast as possible, and that’s how she showed up at Morgan’s room with her appearance even more disheveled than usual. Morgan let her into the room without much fanfare, but Morgan’s mood seemed to have improved now that Alesia was here. Probably because she wanted somebody to do all of the busy work- Alesia was put to work essentially the second she got into the door, and although she wasn’t a student of dark magics, even she could tell that tasks like fetching a sausage roll from the bakery were probably not directly related to studying the spell.

Alesia didn’t mind too much, however, as in-between errands Morgan explained the spell to her. She normally wasn’t one too interested in magic, but the potential for use in her own life kept Alesia’s attention steady as Morgan explained the function of every rune in the spell circle, carefully outlining how they interacted with each other to allow a spirit to invade a body, stay there, but also how the spell tricked the mind of the host into “accepting” the actions of their possessor, retroactively creating thoughts to justify anything that the possessor did that the original host wouldn’t do. Morgan even showed Alesia an “entirely theoretical” way of creating a discreet spell circle on items of clothing or jewelry, allowing for long-range possession, without the need for the rather primitive headbutting that was currently in use to possess Rosalind. Alesia wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw Morgan’s lips curl upwards into a slight smile as she revealed this to Alesia, and Alesia was definitely sure that her face betrayed some slight happiness at the idea of being able to put such a spell circle on Earnest’s locket, allowing her access to his tight, hunky body anytime she wanted. Not that she would use it to violate his privacy or anything- but she should at least test it out, right? And besides, it’s only fair… he did promise her his service after they finished saving Rosalind- this was just more… direct way of accepting payment.

Justifications for turning Earnest into a glorified sex toy aside, Alesia was genuinely pleased at how quickly the process of studying the spell went alongside Morgan. So much so, in fact, that by the time Earnest returned later on that night, Alesia and Morgan were able to greet Earnest with a pleasant surprise- while there wasn’t an easy counter-spell that would instantly reverse the effects of the possession and make Rosalind invulnerable to possession, the two of them had managed to brew a few batches of a specialized potion that would eject an invading soul from the host body and return it to its original body, albeit with a recovery process of two or so weeks and some minor memory loss. While it wasn’t as easy as Earnest was originally hoping, at the very least they now had a repeatable way to counteract the possession process- which paired well with the discovery Earnest had made today while tailing Rosalind. He had tried to join her in her morning sword drills, but presumably because of one of the boys possessing her, probably Ricard, she didn’t actually practice and instead lazed about in the hideout, alone. This matched with what they found the previous day as well, and so it was almost certain that Rosalind would be alone in the hideout during the mornings, making it the best opportunity the trio would have to expel the misfit boys from her body and escape without too much trouble.

Granted, Earnest didn’t disclose the shameful pleasure he received from watching Rosalind masturbate while he was stalking her, and Morgan didn’t disclose the fact that she now had a long-range possession spell that Alesia knew how to use. Alesia, for her part, definitely didn’t tell anyone about the sleeping draught she had slipped into Earnest’s dinner, which gave her ample time to draw the long-range possession spell circle on Earnest’s locket, allowing her to possess his body at any time.

What’s a few secrets between friends, after all?