The Unforgotten Tapestry

As curious as you might be to see what it is Isabelle has cooked up, you're a little **** to be hurried away from your spot watching Ms. Hayden and Mr. York. "You don't think we should hang out a bit longer? What if we can get an even bigger power boost!"

Isabelle reaches out to lightly flick your earlobe. "What happened to time being of the essence?"

"I mean, it totally is, but maybe we can just--!"

"Ash." Your girlfriend's tone is gentle yet inescapably firm. "They're starting to do it. We agreed that was the line between observing and creeping. Right?"

Blaaaah. You steal a glance back into the office under the pretense of confirming Isabelle's bold claim. Sure enough, Ms. Hayden has succeeded in freeing Mr. York's rather oversized penis and, having flipped up her skirt, is in the process of shifting aside her panties as the track coach takes aim. He carefully lines himself up with her already dripping womanhood, Ms. Hayden arcing her back in ecstasy as he smooshes his large cockhead against her plush folds and presses in a few inches. She leans back against his toned chest as he reaches around, one hand wrapping around a big cardigan-clad boob while the other gently caresses her fecund tummy. She's groaning and murmuring into his ear as he sinks the rest of his impressive shaft into her depths, the librarian rolling her rounded hips back against her--

"Ashley."

"Blaaah fine I wasn't creeping let's just go already!"

Isabelle gives you a consoling pat on the head as you begin to march off, Jenny and Rhys following behind. Freakin' Jenny. You'd figured you could count on her to argue to stay as well, which would have bought at least a little more peeping time. But apparently not! Lame. Super lame. Jenny seems to have other things on her mind at the moment. "I'm surprised you weren't more embarrassed by that, Rhys."

"Hm?" The prince tilts his head to one side. "Embarrassed by what?"

Jenny quirks an eyebrow. "Uh, the sex? Right in front of us?"

"Really? Why? They're engaged now; should they not be having sex?"

"No, I mean, it's just..." The girl trails off, eventually offering Rhys a helpless shake of her head. "Okay. I'm, like, not even a little closer to understanding elves."

Rhys nods sagely. "I get it. We are an ancient and complex culture, after all."

You turn around, walking backwards for a moment to give Jenny and Rhys an annoyed look. "Yeah yeah yeah, can the cultural exchange wait for a bit?"

Isabelle makes a comforting noise as you turn around to continue your huffy marching. "Don't mind her. She's just fussy because she's missing out on creeping."

Blaaaaaaaaah.

The science lab is still empty by the time you arrive, so you suppose that your peepshow wasn't interrupted for nothing at least. Rhys takes a lookout position as you make your way back to the storage room door. Might as well check the knob...right, yeah. Locked. Well lucky for you, all the wards you've placed over the school mean you're the master of this domain. It would take a hell of a lock to obstruct you for long. You lace your fingers together and take a moment to stretch your arms above your head, releasing your grip to shake out your hands and grin back at your two friends. "Ready?" They nod, and you clear your throat. Then, you reach out and give the door two solid raps. "Knock knock!"

The lock's tab immediately pops out, the door swinging open as you dip into a grandiose bow and motion for Jenny and Isabelle to enter. Isabelle can't hold in her giggle as she walks by, though Jenny's golf clap earns her a poke in the ribs. You motion for Rhys, and once the prince has passed you join the three of them inside the storage room.

It's...well, it's a high school science lab storage room. It's mostly just a bunch of shelves with locked drawers of chemicals and a few small refrigerators. You feel a little silly to have expected anything else. Jenny and Isabelle seem just as unimpressed, but you can't help noticing Rhys's expression of distaste. "Rhys, do you see something? Oh, is there a glamour here?!"

Rhys nods, his nose twitching as he spins a finger to indicate the entire storage room. "Yeah, over everything."

Good thing you got that mana refill, then. Thanks, Ms. Hayden and Mr. York! You're so suffused with energy that you don't even need a rune, raising one arm to waterspout a spiral of pulsing rainbow directly into the air. Jenny and Isabelle pull disgusted faces as your magics collide with Gal's glamour, the scent of boiling cat piss filling the room as prismatic power quickly obliterates the other witch's illusion. They breath sighs of relief as your magic eradicates the last trace of the sizzling barrier, only for Jenny to dry heave and Isabelle to turn pale as the glamour drops and the true state of the storage room is revealed.

It fucking stinks. There's no other word for it; this place smells fucking awful. Half-eaten food and discarded trash are everywhere, your quarry clearly just dumping anything she'd been eating directly on the floor the exact moment she was tired of it. A filthy mattress is shoved into one corner, stained with fluids you don't even want to begin to contemplate. There's a giant dried cumshot on the wall, and not once in the history of mankind has anyone walked into a room, seen a giant dried cumshot on the wall, and thought 'I'm glad I came here; this was a good decision'.

Jenny starts to take a deep breath to settle herself, then immediately realizes her mistake and pulls her shirt up over her mouth and nose. "Jesus Fuck, Isabelle; please hurry up and do whatever you're going to do?!"

Isabelle gives herself a full body shake, dazedly nodding at Jenny as she pulls a scrap of paper from her pocket. Her eyes flit across whatever she had written down, then she quickly rips the paper into shreds and shoves them back in her pocket. Then she carefully picks her way to the center of the room, doing her best to avoid touching anything, and raises her hands beseechingly out before her. "Okay. Ready?"

You flash a thumbs up. "Go for it."

She nods, quietly closing her eyes. For a moment it seems like nothing is happening, you and Jenny sharing a curious look. But Rhys's ears are twitching; maybe you just can't hear it? You focus a bit more and sure enough, Isabelle is humming. It's so soft and quiet that you have to strain to hear it at all, making it quite a shock when the note doubles in volume and is abruptly joined by second tone harmonizing a sixth above it. A third note joins in a second higher, then a fourth, and then a third, all five notes ringing out in a glorious chord from deep within Isabelle's chest. The chord grows louder and louder, and then Isabelle's eyes flare and she opens her mouth, the notes tinkling away into visible flutter of silvery sound. You watch in awe as the tangible music wafts across the room, enveloping Gal's pigsty of a hideaway with a peaceful blanket of mellifluous tones. It rests there for a moment, then gracefully begins to shift and reshape, overlaying the room with a shimmering reflection of itself.

Jenny gasps, pointing towards the door. "Look!"

You comply, and sure enough there's a silvery figure standing in the middle of the closed door, walking through the door that in her time was opened. That wild mane of hair could only belong to one person. It's definitely Gal. You turn towards the rightfully proud-looking Isabelle. "What is this?"

"It's a sort of spiritual security camera?" Isabelle puts her hands to her hips and inspects her handiwork. "This was under a part of the book that was about 'remembering the tapestry of the past', or something like that. Basically, anything that happens under our wards leaves a magical imprint on them. And this spell lets us check those imprints out."

Jenny gives Isabelle a grin. "Please, Isabelle. Take a bow."

Blushing but clearly pleased, Isabelle does so as you, Jenny and Rhys give her a measured but sincere round of applause. Well! Let's see what this can do! "So this can go back, right? Can you rewind it?"

"Um, yeah; hold on a second." Isabelle squints her eyes for a second, then hesitantly raises her hand and swipes to the left. Immediately the silvery image on the bed goes into a blur, moving in rapidly in reverse as the overlay scans backwards in time. Isabelle throws her hand up seemingly at random, the rewind skidding to a halt. "There, we just oh yuck!"

Unfortunately for all of you, Isabelle stopped the recording just in time to reveal the source of the cumshot, the silvery image of Gal joined by an image of the very old and saggy school janitor as she listlessly jacks him off onto the wall. Jenny covers Rhys's eyes as she screws her own shut as tightly as she can manage. "Forward; go forward!"

Isabelle desperately swipes her hand to the right, sending the overlay careening forward to where Gal is once again striding through the door. Jesus. You aren't that **** to creep on some sexy times. You shudder briefly, doing your best to expunge that scene from your mind. "Okay. Wow. Isabelle, can we try just going back like a day? I want to see what she did after I spotted her."

She nods, cautiously raising her hand again to this time motion with just one finger. The image rewinds a bit more slowly this time, Isabelle bringing it to a stop when Gal is sprawled out on the disgusting mattress. "Okay, I think this should be Sunday morning?"

You nod. "Okay, start it up."

Isabelle motions for the scene to start playing, the silvered projection of Gal crawling out of her rats' nest to sprawl out the filthy ground. When she starts to finger herself, Isabelle irritably puts it into double speed. You note with a touch of spiteful pleasure that the witch was apparently unable to get herself there, her image eventually staggering up to her feet to stomp out of the storage room in a huff. "Okay, she's about to go to the park. Speed it up a bit more?"

Isabelle hums in agreement, and swiping the overlay to move faster. She keeps a close eye on the door, kicking the image back to normal speed at the first sign of Gal making her return. "This should be right after she met you."

You nod slowly, watching as the witch frantically paces around the room. She looks like she's saying something; you'd wish that this overlay had audio, but if it had you would have had to listen to the janitor's orgasm noises. So yeah, you're gonna call that a wash. Eventually Gal seems to come to a conclusion, moving over to the storage boxes lining the shelves. She quickly unlocks them, snatching several containers out and shoving them into a makeshift bindle made from her dirty cloak. Then she turns on her heals and marches out the door, freezing halfway as the scene comes to its end.

Jenny taps her fingers together thoughtfully as Isabelle's overlay begins to fade, the girl glancing your way. "So...she got burned by you, and then she came here and stole a bunch of chemicals."

"Yes. That seems to be the case."

"And she hasn't been back since."

"It does not appear so."

Jenny taps her fingers together for another moment. "That seems bad."

You start to reply, only for the words to die in your throat as the sound of quiet feet tiptap out from the science lab. The others heard it too, Isabelle furrowing her brow as Rhys shares a meaningful glance with Jenny. You're all thinking the same thing: she's back. You raise a hand and motion towards the door with your head, the four of you tiptoeing as softly as you can towards it. Then you meet everyone's eyes one by one, nod, and burst through the door.

You'd been prepared for the worst. A magical barrage, a sudden horde of enemies, just about anything. What you had not been prepared for was a blonde girl who yelps at your sudden appearance or the young man who simultaneously tries to jump back, jump forward to protect his girl, and shove his dick back into his pants but only succeeds in collapsing into a heap on the floor. Is that goddamn Leslie Dickinson? The absurdity of the moment combines with your deep relief and palpable annoyance, making it an absolute certainty that the next words out of your mouth are going to be very, very stupid. "What are you doing here?!"

Leslie's so shocked by the sudden entrance of four people into her afterschool tryst that the obvious response temporarily eludes her. "I, er, we were just,"--She quickly adjusts her more or less completely removed skirt, quickly shuffling in front of David Wright in a vain attempt to hide his partial nudity--"Making out! We were just making out!" She narrows her eyes, the proper response finally occurring to her. "Wait, what are you guys doing here?!"

You don't have very much time to consider that, so you just grab Isabelle by the hand and wing it. "Um, we were also making out?"

Leslie blinks at that, then turns towards Jenny and Rhys, your friend immediately joining in on your ruse. "We were too!" She quickly backtracks when Leslie furrows her brow, trying to work that out. "I mean, we were going to? But Isabelle and Ashley were already here, so we were, um..." She turns helplessly towards Rhys, only able to shrug. "I don't know. Find somewhere else?"

The elf prince nods solemnly, fixing Leslie with a look of deep sincerity. "Yes. We should really make a schedule for this exact situation. It is very disruptive. To all the make-outs."

Leslie is embarrassed enough by the whole situation to actually accept the hot pile of nonsense that you just dished up for her. She bends down to help her struggling boyfriend up. "Well alright I guess, but next time maybe we--!" She gasps as David tries to stand, only to buckle with a pained grunt when he puts weight on his right leg. "David! Are you okay?"

Shit, that ankle looks swollen as hell. You wordlessly glance at Isabelle, who immediately nods and moves to help Leslie prop David between their shoulders. "Here; let me help!"

As the two of them start to move the injured boy out into the hallway, you can already sense the faint tickle of Isabelle's healing magics pulsing into him. You really want to follow them to make sure David's okay, but....You glance over towards Jenny, and her resolute nod confirms what you know. You can't follow them.

You've got a witch to catch.