Open the other two books

After a few moments of thought about whether or not to try the summoning, a few thoughts pass through my head. The similarity of the goddess in the drawing and the eldritch queen I saw in my dream and the fact that the book doesn’t look completely fake- outside of the weird cutesy aesthetic of the whole thing- sticks in my head. Are the other two legit, also? Or, do they at least look it?

I get out of the candle circle and head over to my desk to look at the other two books that I’d overlooked earlier. My eyes trace over the covers of both them and the pink book, as I notice more and more details about all three of them that I missed in my frustration and confusion earlier.

The covers are far more high quality than I thought, with the material and thickness resembling an old novel and all of the designs sprawling over them being actually embossed into them. The pages are all edged with what looks like real gold to me, probably giving some more weight to the books. Light flickering from the candles behind me catches on the edges of the pages and the embossing on the covers, giving them an almost otherworldly glow. The only thing taking away from the enchanting aura of the books is the aggressive smell of formaldehyde emanating from the three of them.

After a moment, I hesitantly open the covers of the two other books to see a similar decorative color-matching piece of paper to the first book. I flip past it in both books to see a similar layout to the pink one, with the left page being some sort of design and the right having relevant text.

The design on the yellow book’s first page is a crown and chess piece-like design, with the words “King in Yellow” at the top and the number 1 ‘cut out’ of the crown. The design on the matching page for the book has three characters that look almost Japanese in a circle, with the words “Banish Muu” underneath.

The main difference is that the yellow book has what looks like the first page of a play, probably called the King in Yellow, and the blue has an apology note before a banishment ritual. Strange, I think to myself, before trying to decide what to do with them. At this point, I can’t deny that these have to be legitimate; no one would put this much time and money into making books that are this high quality just to run a scam- that would completely defeat the point.

The main question is what I should do with them. It would be irresponsible to leave three god or goddess summoning books just lying around my apartment. On the other hand, I can’t just throw these away. What if someone sees? What if one of the deities somehow finds out and gets mad at me? The only other options it feels like I have would be to read through all of the books and see if there’s anything that could help me, but who knows how long that could take?

It doesn’t feel like I have many good options, but I have to take one of them.