AN: Commissioned by @KreenWarrior
Sitting on the terrace café in Marseilles, Ouroboros sighed and stirred her coffee. Europe was a beautiful place, if you could get used to the peculiarities of the girls there. Everywhere around the world, this profession of hers was different. The bright lights and darks of Asia, the flash in the pan of the Americas, protective and cooperative powers in Africa, the glorious fury and epics of the Middle East… it was all different, and all special.
"I told you already, my circle can handle him." The girl in front of her, Bridgette, said airily. "It's not so major a demon to cause a true planar warp, and that's the danger here. Everything else, we have a counter for."
Ouroboros rolled her eyes. "If you are correct on the identity of what was summoned, then yes, you can handle him. If you are incorrect and my guild's research holds true, then what will happen is you'll walk in and then you're going to get entrapped by a bounded field."
"You place too much stock in your circle's research." Bridgette said loftily. "You are but a young group, and have much to learn from your seniors."
Rolling her eyes, Ouroboros pulled out a cigarette and lit it with a snap of her fingers. "One, that is blatantly disengious considering we are the experts in Demonic interference in Witch-work and are globally known for it. Two, your circle is twelve girls strong, and this is the sort of threat that everyone agrees should be handled by at least twenty or thirty girls so you have proper recovery for wounded."
"We are masters of elan and have autonomous recovery." Bridgette said, sipping her drink. "This has let us trim out far more wasted manpower than you'd first think."
"You finally got that finished?" Ouroboros asked, nearly dropping her cigarette. "You are dancing on the cusp of madness, and there is exactly one artificer I know who could be remotely trusted to create a golem not given direct and divine animation. We are not in Rome. This path has been closed to us for centuries!"
Bridgette chuckled darkly. "Whoever considered that we would give the machine a soul? No, let it rest as mere iron and automata. Without something for a demon to strike at, it will be as if a tree, or safer."
"I do not trust your engineering nor your artifacy."
"And I do not care what a girl a century my junior has to say about the way I run my circle or how I choose my targets. I was born under the auspices of the Sun King, and this circle was founded with his personal blessings." Bridgette said, her temper cold as leaded glass, and twice as brittle.
That was nothing, though, next to Ouroboros' rage. "The Sun King, then? Well enough, for a ruler in Europe, a benighted continent of disease tied to the yoke of feudal warlords. I was born as cousin to Abbas the First, the Great, the Shah of Shahs, and I predate your precious lightbulb of this cesspit by at least sixty years. If we did not both fight those evils which have plagued our trade and the world for the last three thousand years after Sulayman the Great first took note of what djinn chose to reject the light of God and work against the hands of man, then I would surely take you to the field and demand what excuse for satisfaction one so enraptured in their own chemical bliss might provide."
Rejecting the table, Ouroboros moved over to the balcony, staring south. "Sirocco!" she roared, ire raging. "Sirocco! Sirocco!"
This done, she stood up on the railing, put her spread hand up to her lips, then pointed to a closed hand with one finger before jumping off the railing. Two stories were enough of a fall, though, and as she ran over Bridgette realized that her conversational partner had disappeared without a trace.
-/-/-/
"Boss, you can't keep doing that to me." Sirocco groaned, back when they were on the boat. "I nearly dropped you. Twice!"
Laughing, Ouroboros gave her friend a hug and a kiss on the forehead. "I know, I'm sorry, but it's so much fun! You're the fastest flyer I've seen in decades, and it's like the good old days of barnstorming again!"
Walking up to the two of them, a young woman in dark slacks and a ruffle shirt under a waistcoat sighed. "Ouroboros, please stop trying to poach my girlfriend for, like, ten minutes? Please?"
"I'm sorry, Zephyr." Ouroboros said, before walking over to her and kissing her cheek too. "I'm still a tad wound up by that damn tart. Trying to bludgeon me, of all people, with her seniority and pedigree!"
"Well, you can be salty about it belowdecks." Zephyr said, although not unkindly. "We've a request to make best time for Montreal, because some other members of your whatever-you-call-it need to take the Northwest Passage up and carry some plane-sensitive cargo to Sendai."
"Couldn't they just fly out to Kaguya and fly back?"
"It's too sensitive even for that apparently. Might even be too sensitive for you to stay on the boat!" Zephyr said, laughing. "As much as I love your coin, you know that your semi-corporeal form fucks with touchy stuff."
"Listen, you need a crazy Serb to try and potshot you out of a car one time with bullets that'll actually stick, and you get a little paranoid." Ouroboros griped. "Still, I do need to do some stuff and change my makeup, so if you don't mind?"
"Go ahead." The two Winds said, smiling.
Belowdecks, the ship was titanic, enlarged beyond the constraints of her mere physical volume time and time again over the last hundred and fifty years. Each timber had been enscrolled with corporeal magic ten, no, a hundred times over; each frame decorated in layer on layer of fine spellwork and mysticism. It took a fair bit of walking to find her cabin suite, but once Ouroboros did it still smelled like home and a boat. Lighting two sticks of incense, she settled down on the floor, humming softly as she brought up the hundreds of bounded fields that surrounded her body. Before she had been Ouroboros, she had been the Decietful, using layers on layers of fields to control her appearance like the paint on a doll. As the last of the magic faded away, she examined her true form. Strong bones defined her face, and there was a trace of the mountainside in the tone of her skin and the structure of her face. Her body was still full and hale, an image of slight beauty that had just discovered the cusp of womanhood, but would never become a matron in the fullness of time.
Smiling into her mirror, Ouroboros sat down on the sea chest at the end of her bed, and considered what to become. Montreal was a city of European design and logic, but the people, the Canadians, were not the blood-hungry ones that clamored for the strength of nations that Europeans did. She could afford to let more of her true face show, although some slight tweaks to her eyes added a sense of Orientalism that would throw most people off. A bit more flare to her nose, now, and a narrower, more heart-shaped face would work wonders. As to the rest of her? Well, now, that depended. Negafook would probably be there, and she was a sucker for a strong build.
Inflating her size to over two hundred centimeters, Ouroboros started sculpting her body carefully. Muscle, yes, but not the corded and detailed work that would be incorgious. Assets a-plenty, yes, both above and below, but a trim waist with a hint of softness. Voluptuous, that was the goal, not balloons on bricks. The right clothes to accent it, that would be a trick. Black, red, white; that would be the color scheme, darker below and lighter above as the blouse grew white fluff and blood-red trim and the skirt had napping panels that changed colors as she spun. A ring on her right finger, black jet, and a pair of golden studs finished the costume with a smile.
After that came the waiting. Grabbing a smartphone built as a trade of tools with a rather adventurous gal in Singapore, she started scanning through the contacts. Everyone was asleep, naturally. Oh well- she could use this time to design a scroll, or-
-or get some tedious rituals out of the way. Taking a few minutes to lock down the spellwork that led to this appearance, Ouroboros sent it away and got to work. Her present title was one that was older than her, and a technique that was a trade. The American Alchemists with their strict focus on not bypassing the Law of Equivalent Exchange, and for all the headaches it caused them it existed for a reason- not because it was a law of nature, but because it was a law of
man. It kept the caster out of the equation; prevented the soul from entering the work, and divorced the practitioner from what they wrought.
The Ritual of the Ouroboros was the opposite. At the end of the world beyond which all the lands of Men might lie, was the World-Snake, forever encircling the world with it's tail grasped in it's mouth to form a circle of containment and bounding. Here lies the realm of Man, and here lies the realms not of Man. It was eternal. If one could draw a mystical connection, one could take on attributes of a creature. Shapeshifters used it as the root of their art; summoners and voudun priests too.
The fact the World-Snake was alive made it a perfectly valid target, and at some point, a brave woman went and made the connection, and bound it into a ritual.
Now, it was Ouroboros, once called Deceiver, once called Djinn-whisperer, once called Nahid, and forever known for her artistry, who would preform this working. Drawing out her namesake symbol on the floor of the cabin, she sighed and started chanting. This was the language of her childhood, and not one soul would understand the simplicity of the creation. Three steps around the inside of the circle, repeated three times, then a pinch of hair from the head and a pinch of hair from elsewhere to show the head and the tail coming together. Settling down to the floor, the girl once called Nahid sighed and got to the hard part- shifting her leg up and around to where she could bite her foot.
A large part of the ritual was establishing the sympathetic mimicry, and that meant motion to represent the orbit of the World-Snake around the realms of man, and stillness to show the eternity. While, naturally, mirroring the posture of the World-Snake. So, the girl once called Nahid sat there, and bit her foot until faint drops of crimson fell to the decking, and held her position. Scars still decorated her foot from those early days when her legs and tendons weren't used to holding this position and her teeth had ripped at herself, but several hundred years was plenty of time to correct a technique. The rocking of the ship didn't disturb her any, and slowly her mind faded away. Mortal concerns did not disturb the World-Snake, for it was eternal. The passage of days, the motion of one star, the spinning of a planet, not nearly so important as the peace and serenity that was eternity.
The girl once called Nahid was not so immortal, nor so immaterial, however, and as a twinge ran through her leg she brought it down, sighing. The ritual was complete, and some quick work with a broom and dustpan cleaned the floor, while a fast spell disposed of the material reagents needed.
Groaning, Ouroboros stretched herself back out, and re-cast her preferred face for today. If her clock was correct, they'd reach Montreal soon, and it would behoove her to make sure she was ready. After all, one never knew what sort of fun she would find!