It might not be anything worth all that much concern. Niko’s body is already littered with small enchantments and spells, he carries a knife sheathed at his hip that would glow similarly if he were to turn his gaze on it. From someone that came from a family of alchemists, the idea that they would pass on some magical relic is honestly expected. He just doesn’t expect it to whisper. The sharpest of his teeth sink into that long healed hole in his lip, tugging at it for a moment before he shrugs. “It’s enchanted. Or… an enchantment. Probably not a surprise. It’s…”
He pauses briefly, uncertain what he’d follow it up with. The urge to investigate more fully is a powerful thing, that quiet craving that feels like aching in his bones. Not just for power, but for understanding, to see and feel how the lines of the universe fit together, like he might see more clearly how he fits together. His fascination with magic has always been a selfish thing. He’s never pretended otherwise.
“Sight is a limiting sense. Especially when it comes to magic.” He’s saying the words without any real thought to his own intentions, but it’s only after they’re past his lips that he knows exactly how to answer that cutting question Justin throws at him.
Those simple words are all the opportunity he gives him to tell him no. It might be cruel that he doesn’t wait longer, maybe some part of what he does will always be a cruelty. Still, it’s a small fraction of what he’s capable. Hand settling against Justin’s chest, half aware the way his own heart rate starts to pick up. He does his best to ignore it, focusing solely on the power in his veins. “Just trust me.”
And he pushes. It’s only that, the slightest shove that has nothing to do with his physical frame. Not enough to rend his soul from his bones. Just enough to jar it out of place, to shift his reality, his vision, erase that reliability on his eyes to see with.
‘Enchanted’ isn’t a word that means much to Justin. Its meaning is easy enough to suss out, but if that kind of magic were possible in his craft, it was news to him. Or maybe not, because the deeper he plunders his memories, the more he realizes how few times he’d actually cared enough to peek in on Dawn’s work. How often, looking through her grimoire, he passed quickly over pages that made no sense, immediately deemed above his pay grade. How it made no sense that he even had her grimoire to begin with, how she would have known exactly where to send it. Once intimately familiar, the gem on his hand now feels full of hidden meaning and mystery. And that was just before.
Justin’s eyes snap to Niko’s. The other man doesn’t exactly wait for permission to touch him, a gesture that wouldn’t be that bad on its own. But something like anxiety creeps into his heart as Niko’s palm presses flat to his chest, like his body knows what’s being implied here far ahead of his mind’s ability to form an opinion on how he feels about it. They’d talked extensively about their magic, exchanged offers of friendly service. But only now at the threat of experiencing it does Justin remember how absolutely terrifying it all sounded. Manipulation...of the soul.
His own pulse races beneath that hand. He opens his mouth to say something, but everything shifts and the words evaporate from his tongue as a completely new sensation falls over him from head to toe. A kind of feeling of dislocation while still being there. Justin can both feel his body and not feel it, his vision blurred by some kind of foreign motion. He’s never felt anything like it before. And never heard anything like it either.
It’s a strange fear that paralyzes him, this feeling of falling while also being totally still. He stands there and experiences what this world is like on a different plane, staring deeper into his own hand, into the strange glow and whisper of his family gem. Justin’s no stranger to whispers, noise, tiny hints that things aren’t right. This is something else entirely and it just...feels wrong. If he strains, he can feel it. It’s more than just many different voices trying to speak at once. They all speak on top of each other, a voice that’s both one and many. Many. He doesn’t hear words but he can almost feel the pain. A compulsion defying nature. The need to separate mixed with ancient acceptance that it will never, never happen again.
After floating for a while, it feels almost violent when Justin returns to his body, in full. As gentle of a slide, as short of a distance, it wracks him, and he tightly scrunches his eyes together when it hits, waves of nausea crashing over his head until he’s stumbling away from Niko and the pond they stood at. Reaching out, he stumbles the second his hand comes into contact with something solid, his head craning out and then hanging as he vomits, standing, onto the asphalt. His hand curls into a fist against the exterior of the car he’s leaning against, trying to breathe through subsequent waves of sickness and hold back more urges to retch. His body feels like the plucked string of a harp, waiting to be still and vibrate no more.
When it passes, he drags his arm past his mouth with a grimace and eventually takes a step back to turn and face Niko again, still somewhat catching his breath. As much as he could say about what he’s just been through, his mind is still stuck on one single revelation.
“...lives. They are lives in this--?” He pants, glancing down at his family ring again with unease. Did Dawn know? His mother? Hers? He palms the sharp edges of the gem, trying to hear what he no longer can.
