Headmaster of Shadowfrost Part 4

"I summon the Great and Terrible Azoozel!" the cultist chanted.

"Pretty sure it's supposed to be Azoovel," one of the other robed cultists pointed out after about twenty seconds of nothing happening.

"If someone hadn't spilled guacamole on the book, we wouldn't be having this problem," the last cultist complained with annoyance.

"It was really good dip," the cultist that had been chanted argued.

'Great, I get summoned by cultists and they can't even do a simple demon summoning,' Zoe Smith grumbled as she finished quietly picking the locks on her shackles on her ankles while the idiots were distracted with arguing, using the fact that they'd stuffed her into a robe to her advantage to hide her progress.

"Just summoned the fucking demon so we can get paid," the cultist that had been complaining about the guacamole snapped.

"I'm trying," the first cultist complained. "I summon the Great and Terrible Azoovel!"

Zoe rolled her eyes when it became obvious that it wasn't working. "You're really bad at this but I shouldn't be surprised, this is probably your mother's basement."

"We managed to summon Gripnar the Devouring," the cultist replied defensively, doing his best to ignore the fact that she wasn't wrong.

"And yet, no luck with Asnoozel," Zoe replied sarcastically, a bit annoyed and relieved that she'd gotten kidnapped by incompetent cultists.

"The directions are really complicated," the chubby cultist argued defensibly.

"Maybe if you hadn't used the rubber chicken, it would have worked," Zoe argued.

"If you don't shut up we'll summon Gripnar the Devouring and he'll eat your entrails," the first cultist snapped, less than happy about the teenager's cheek.

Zoe laughed. "Bullshit. There's no way you have the talent to summon Gripnork the Devouring."

"It's Gripnar!" the cultist snapped then proceeded to pull out his ritual dagger and cut the back of his arm. "Gripnar the Devouring, I summon thee. Accept our sacrifice and grant me power!"

Zoe watched the portal open behind the cultists. "Huh, I was wrong."

"Devour this child and give me power!" the cultist chanted, perfectly willing to alter things so they weren’t standing around looking like idiots for another twenty minutes.

Zoe watched with a smirk as a giant red hand with black fingernails reached through the portal, grabbed the cultist around the waist and quickly pulled the screaming idiot back through the portal.

"Shit!" the other cultist blurted as he tried to figure out what the hell had gone wrong with the summoning spell that Jake had successfully used several times before.

Zoe used the distraction to twist around and jump to her feet then lunged forward and kicked the chubby cultist through the portal.

"What the fuck?!" the last cultist sputtered out when the portal snapped shut, shocked that his friend had jumped through the portal as he hadn't seen Zoe kick him.

Zoe lunged forward and wrapped the iron shackles that they'd used to secure her around the asshole's neck and started strangling him, less than happy about getting kidnapped by idiots that couldn't even read disclaimers. She ran the struggling cultist face first into a wall then bashed his head against the concrete several times before he managed to shove her away from him.

"I'm going to fuck you!" the cultist snarled as he stalked toward the girl that had ruined everything, too furious to see straight. He shrieked when he stepped on a forgotten lego piece, stumbled forward, clipped the desk with his hip and fell face first into one of the candle stick holders that they'd placed around the pentagram they'd drawn in chalk on the floor driving the candle through his eye and into his brain.

Zoe glanced at the idiot's bare feet and the innocent lego on the ground. 'Probably just as well that I didn't get kidnapped by competent people,' she mused, not sure how she'd gotten from the school bus to the basement but figuring she'd probably been drugged or maybe they'd used magic since she hadn't woken up feeling dazed or groggy like she'd drank too much cough syrup. 'I never thought I'd see actual magic but I guess reading Sam's book on demon summoning paid off,' she mused as she walked around the ritual circle the cultists had drawn on the floor with chalk.

She walked over to check the leather bound book sitting on a stool, fairly sure Sam would have happily killed them for the damage to the ancient tome. She flipped back a few pages until she got to Gripnar's page. 'Blood of the summoner, invocation, a rather long list of powers and abilities that he can grant if you're willing to sacrifice an untainted soul. Huh, I guess this version doesn't actually explain everything that untainted includes, oh well, his loss.'

Zoe twitched and jumped when the ritual circle caught fire. She had a second to take in the scene and to realize that the cultist's blood had pooled enough that it had touched the chalk outline and activated the pentagram or at least that was the only thing she could come up with in the couple of seconds she had before she found herself in a pitch black room. "Shit!"

"Are you okay?" Dawn asked as she opened the coffin that contained an attractive and busty redheaded teenager that looked a lot like Julia.

"I'm good…" she trailed off when she saw Dawn, getting a bit tongue tied.

"Welcome to the Shadowfrost sect," Dawn offered as she held her hand out to help the girl up.

"Great, more cultists," Zoe complained as she glanced between the attractive girl and the middle aged man wearing jeans and a green sweatshirt.

"We're not cultists," Mist assured her.

"I'm a mad scientist," Dawn offered helpfully.

"And that's better?" Zoe asked as she let Dawn help her out of the coffin that was attached to a strange machine.

"We generally don't summon eldritch monstrosities," Dawn assured her.

"Generally?" Zoe asked.

"Accidents happen but don't worry, you're not a test subject," Dawn assured her.

Zoe glanced around the lab that looked like something out of an old horror movie. "How did I get here?"

"What's the last thing you remember?" Mist asked.

"You're not going to believe me but sure. I was riding home on the bus and then I woke up in chains wearing an itchy cheap hotel robe in someone's basement with three robed figures that were trying and failing to summon a demon."

"Trying?" Dawn asked.

Zoe shrugged. "One of the idiots had spilled guacamole on the name of the demon they were trying to summon which prevented them from getting the name right. Since it wasn't working they swapped to trying to summon a different demon. Much to my surprise they actually managed to open a portal. Much to their shock the demon grabbed the summoner and pulled him through the portal."

"Why?" Dawn asked, wondering if they'd screwed something up.

"The demon's entry in the book warned people about trying to sacrifice tainted people, the other version of the ritual I'd read mentioned that the ritual was for sacrificing virgins," Zoe explained.

"And you're not?" Dawn asked.

Zoe shrugged. "My boyfriend is a goth. He made a pretty good argument that being a virgin increased my risk of getting captured and sacrificed to a demon so we fixed that problem."

Dawn stared at Zoe. "And you believed him?"

"No," Zoe replied a touch sarcastically, knowing that she owed her boyfriend an apology. "If you'd asked me yesterday I'd have told you that the only demons in the world were drunks, lawyers and priests but Sam is hot as hell and has abbs that you could grade cheese on so yeah, we had sex."

"Makes sense," Mist agreed.

"Where am I?" Zoe asked.

"You're in a pocket dimension attached to a Xainxia world and we're running a cultivation school," Mist told her.

"Does that mean I can learn magic?" Zoe asked excitedly.

"Cultivation involves manipulating qi so it's not actually magic but yes, you get to learn magic," Mist told her.

"Fuck yeah!" Zoe exclaimed. "This is going to be awesome. Wait, how did I get here?"

Mist gestured toward the machine. "Dawn has a student summoning device."

"Does that mean I'm supposed to be a hero?" Zoe asked.

"No, it just means that you're related to Julia Smith and that you have a talent for purifying corruption," Mist explained.

"You know Julia?" Zoe asked excitedly. "Is she okay? She vanished a week ago."

"She's fine, if a bit annoyed about getting summoned and no, we didn't summon her," Dawn assured her. "We just noticed her talent when she showed up at the school and figured we'd give you a chance to kick ass, take names and get magic."

"Sweet!" Zoe replied, rather happy that she wasn't stuck being a hero.

"Do you want to summon another sibling?" Dawn asked as she quickly set up another sibling with the same perks and flaws as Zoe.

"Absolutely," Zoe replied with a grin, knowing that Sara would stab her if she ever learned that she hadn't summoned her to learn actual magic when she had a chance.

Dawn grinned as she closed the coffin lid, selected the alien abduction option and started feeding the machine magic stones.

0o0o0

Mark screamed when a beam of blue light hit the car as it pulled into the alley and the car floated off the ground. "What the fuck?!"

"Language!" Mr Franks scolded his teenage son absently as he checked the mirrors, trying to figure out if he'd hit something or if someone had a rig with a giant magnet or something that explained why it felt like someone had just lifted the car off the ground.

"Let's go!" Sarah shouted as she grabbed the door handle and tried to force the door open so that she could jump out of the car, more than a bit annoyed when she realized that she couldn't get it to open.

"Don't open the door!" Mr Franks snapped as it became apparent that the car was several meters off the ground and getting higher.

"We need to leave!" Sarah replied as she grabbed the knob and started quickly rolling down the window so that she could crawl out of the car, extremely happy that the old car had manual windows since Frank was the type of control freak that would have tried to stop her from escaping.

"What's going on?" Mark blurted as he pressed his head against the window of the passenger side window and tried to look up at whatever had grabbed the car.

"There's a perfectly reasonable explanation," Mr Franks assured them as he started honking the horn, wanting to bring someone's attention to the mistake that had the car in the air.

'Yeah, you're fucking insane,' Sarah complained as she climbed out of the window and jumped onto the roof as the car floated up, not interested in getting pulled up into the sky.

"Interesting," a voice offered, causing Sarah to stare at the average looking man that was wearing an old fashioned black suit and a pair of black sunglasses like he was a 50’s FBI agent.

Sarah's gaze jumped to the hand that was behind the man's leg, fairly sure he was holding something. "What the hell is going on?"

"We are collecting test subjects," the man replied as he pulled some type of alien blaster out from behind his leg and fired it at the girl that was already dodging out of the way.

Sarah rolled behind some type of metal exhaust vent that was almost as tall as she was, trying to get a bit of cover while she figured out what the hell was going on and which agency the asshole was part of. 'Or maybe he escaped the asylum?' she thought as she grabbed the three foot length of 2x4 with a couple of nails in it from next to the security door that someone had probably been using as a doorstop then grabbed an empty crumbled cigarette pack off the ground.

"Resistance is futile, you will be probed," the man said in a monotone voice as he walked over to get a clear shot.

Sarah tossed the empty pack at the man as he walked around the corner then swung the board at his head, taking advantage of the distraction. Her first hit caused the man to drop his blaster, the second hit managed to sink one of the nails into his temple, causing a bright green fluid to leak out as she yanked the board out. She hit him a third time then continued hitting him in the head once he collapsed until he stopped twitching.

"The only person that is going to probe me is my boyfriend or Ms Victoria," Sarah told the disfigured man in the suit that was bleeding a glowing green goo from all of the cuts and gashes on his face. She picked up the alien blaster, being careful not to touch anything that vaguely resembled a trigger. She looked up at Mr Franks car and watched it vanish into a hole in the sky before it vanished. 'Great, they've got a ship.'

She walked over the hopefully dead alien and quickly searched his pockets, finding a tablet-like device along with strange and alien letters on it, a bulky almost steampunk-like watch and a weird object that looked like a sonic toothbrush that had replaced the brush part with a bronze ball. "Weird," she muttered as she put the loot in the pockets of her jacket.

The other alien shot the female test subject with his stunner, causing her to collapse. He glanced around to make sure he wasn't being observed then tapped the device on his wrist, deactivating his personal cloaking device so he could save the charge. "Resistance is futile, you will be probed…" the alien trailed off as the girl vanished, rather annoyed that someone had stolen his test subject.

0o0o0

Dawn opened the coffin and looked at the unconscious redhead wearing a leather coat jacket, a black skirt and a pair of sneakers that could have been a clone of Zoe. "Twins?"

"Yep," Zoe replied. "Why is she unconscious?"

"Zoe?" Sarah asked as she clawed her way to consciousness, feeling like she'd been hit by a taser.

"What happened?" Zoe asked.

"Mark has shitty luck, I was almost abducted by aliens," Sarah complained as she sat up and glanced around the room, a touch surprised that she wasn't on a space ship or in a secret base or something.

"Aliens?" Zoe asked, pretending to be surprised as she'd seen the computer screen when Dawn selected that option.

"Apparently, they looked human enough but their blood was green and it was glowing like the sludge from the Turtles," Sarah explained. "What's going on?"

"Long story short, Dawn has a machine that summons or creates people and Julia has a really nice bloodline power for dealing with magical corruption and we're in a Xainxia world and we're going to get magic," Zoe explained excitedly.

Sarah focused on Zoe. "Why are you wearing a crappy motel robe?"

"I got abducted by cultists on the way home," Zoe replied with a shrug.

"Why?" Sarah asked.

"They were going to sacrifice me for powers but the demon liked virgins so it killed them instead," Zoe explained.

Sarah studied her twin for a couple of seconds before she sighed. "Shit, I owe Sam twenty bucks since you actually saw a demon."

"If it makes you feel better, we don't have a way back so you won't have to pay him," Zoe offered.

"Sort of but not really," Sarah admitted. "What type of magic?"

"We have a couple of qi techniques. You were summoned because Julia has a talent that makes her immune to corrupted qi and it's a family trait so we summoned you, mostly because Zoe thought you'd be unhappy if we didn't."

"Damn straight," Sarah replied. "When can I start?"

"As soon as you change into the school uniform," Dawn replied as she walked over to the machine that created the uniforms and pulled the lever twice to make two uniforms for the girls.

Sarah stared at the strange machine that looked a bit like an old fashioned slot machine without the reels or possibly a vending machine with a lever. "What is that?"

"It's my uniform creating machine, it makes symbiotes that can change shape into different types of clothing," Dawn explained as she pulled a bundle of sheer fabric out of the slot and tossed it to Zoe.

"That's pretty cool," Sarah replied as she climbed out of the coffin.

"Speaking of magic, should I summon another sibling?" Dawn asked as she grabbed the other uniform and tossed it to Sarah.

"We're sort of out of siblings," Zoe pointed out.

"There are plenty of alternate dimensions," Dawn offered.

"Are we talking about dimensions where a different sperm reached the egg first or like versions of us from a comic book world?" Sarah asked excitedly.

"That's not one of the options but we might be able to come up with something since we have options for alien abductions and being summoned by cultists."

"Does that mean you're responsible for that shit with the Men in Black freak?" Sarah asked.

"I think it just finds a version of you that was in the middle of shit or maybe it just copies a version of you and gives you memories of the specific issues. I'm not actually sure how the minion creation machine works."

"You're not…" she trailed off as she unrolled the uniform enough to realize how sheer it was. "Do you honestly expect us to wear this?"

"We're working on changing it but we haven't had a chance to sit down and officially change it," Mist offered.

"It could be worse," Zoe pointed out as she turned so that she wasn't facing Mist and worked on putting the cheerleading outfit on.

"How?" Sarah asked.

"It could be hot pink," Zoe replied with amusement.

"Fair," Sarah admitted and focused on Dawn. "Did you say minion creation machine?"

"I'm pretty sure it's summoning or coping people but we don't actually have a way to check if you're a copy or if you're the original," Dawn admitted.

Sarah glanced at her twin. "What do you think?"

"I think having magic is awesome and I'd be pissed if someone talked someone out of summoning me to a world where I could learn magic," Zoe argued.

"And if you're a clone?" Sarah asked.

Zoe shrugged. "If I'm a clone, that just means I have to track the original down and give her magic when we get a chance and clone Sam."

Sarah shook her head. "I'm probably still in shock from finding out that aliens are real but sure, go ahead and summon more siblings."

"Sounds good," Dawn agreed as she walked back over to the minion creation machine and selected another sibling. "Aliens, hit by truck-kun or summoned by cultists? Unless you want to deal with a local version?"

"Not really, I don't think we'd be able to relate," Sarah argued.

"Go with hit by Truck-Kun," Zoe suggested as Mist closed the lid on the coffin.

"I'll give it a try, they'll probably get over it," Dawn replied as she quickly selected all of the perks and flaws for the new girl. She selected the sent by Truck-Kun option and fed the machine five magic stones then hit the button, causing the machine to beep and popup a message, letting her know that she'd unlocked a cosplayer flaw.

"Fuck!" Rose cursed as she woke up in a pitch black room lying on her back. "It's just a dream, it's just a dream."

Mist opened the coffin, revealing a naked red haired girl that looked like a mix of Julia, Zoe and Sarah. 'At least Dawn will be too busy with the girls to try to take over the world.'

Rose Smith sat up and looked around the room that looked like something out of an old horror movie. "What's going on? Have you seen the fucking transformer?!"

"The what?" Zoe asked.

"It's a truck that transforms into a mech!" Rose replied as she glanced around the room, half expecting it to burst through a wall.

"What happened?" Sarah asked as she studied the girl that looked like a more attractive version of her older sister.

Rose took a breath and tried to calm down after a couple of seconds when she realized that the monster was probably waiting for her outside. "It started a couple of weeks ago when I got to Tokyo for an exchange program, I kept seeing an old truck following me around and then I almost got hit a few times. It was the same truck, the same smug looking Asian guy with a Han shot first t-shirt and a Pepsi hat."

"I hate Pepsi," Zoe muttered.

"Same," Rose agreed, even less amused with the foul tasting sludge than she'd been before the asshole had started trying to kill her. "I had to jump onto a dumpster and climb up a fire escape to avoid the truck when it drove down an alley to kill me. It nearly got me in the hotel when it crashed through the wall. Things died down for a week then it showed up in the middle of campus and transformed into a mech and started shooting the shit out of everything and screaming my name. I managed to get out of the city but the damned thing must have followed me because the last thing I remember was the living room wall of the exchange family I was staying with exploding as a truck barreled through it."

"And this is why I didn't want to pick that option," Mist muttered.

"You're safe," Dawn assured her, feeling a bit guilty about the whole thing.

"It’s Japan, I was half expecting tentacle monsters or lunatics kidnapping me and tossing me on a perverted gameshow, but I wasn't expecting a fucking transformer," Rose complained. "Where are we?"

"We're in a magical school that happens to be in a pocket dimension that is connected to a Xainxia world," Mist offered.

"Figures," Rose muttered. "Do you have any clothes I can borrow?"

"No but I have a shape-changing uniform that you can have," Dawn replied as she walked over to the costume machine to get another uniform.

"Shape-changing?" Rose asked, her eyes lighting up as she thought about all of the various characters she could pull off.

"You can also spend qi to boost the costume's durability so it's pretty useful," Dawn told her.

"Is it going to eat people like Venom?" Rose asked, wanting to make sure it wasn't going to try to possess her.

"It's not actually intelligent," Dawn assured her as she pulled the lever so she could get another costume.

"Good," Rose replied. "So, I'm Rose Smith, why do the girls look like me and can I get some names?"

"They're your sisters from another dimension," Mist offered.

"Sisters from another dimension?" Rose asked. "Right, pull the other one."

Mist shrugged. "I can't say I blame you, I wouldn't believe me either. By the way, I'm Mist, I'm the headmaster of the school. Dawn is our resident mad scientist."

"Dawn Summers, it's nice to meet you," Dawn assured her as she tossed the sheer uniform to Rose.

"Do you have any proof that you're my siblings?" Rose asked the girls that looked like twins and a fair bit like her mother.

"Is your sister's name Julia?" Zoe asked.

"And your parents are Vincent and April, right?" Sarah asked.

"That just proves you did some research," Rose argued.

"Take a breath and relax, if you give me a chance I'll prove that magic is real and then we can summon more siblings from alternate dimensions and you can start learning to fight," Dawn offered.

"I can fight," Rose argued. "Why are you summoning family members from alternate dimensions?"

"You should probably make a cheat sheet so you don't have to explain everything," Mist suggested. "I'm going to grab another basket and start making more stones so we can get some techniques from the library."

"Sounds like a plan," Dawn agreed as she walked over to the minion creation machine to create another minion while she explained. 'At least we have the Beggar's Tree so we don't need to worry about starving.'

Mist smiled as he left the lab, looking forward to seeing what type of techniques the library could generate if they had a decent supply of magic stones.

0o0o0