The Second Day
You have not pushed yourself like this in quite a while, but the ticking deadline of the voting forces your hand. Sighing, you begin to pen the last few flourishes onto the scroll, setting down the magical theory that will form the basis of a new spell. Besides you, Rin lies on her front, waving her bare legs about in boredom. For some reason, she begins kicking you playfully, nudging your arm and your writing perilously close to ruining the effort of the past day. As you make to grab her ankle, she slides away with a cheerful giggle.
“If I mess this up, it’s on you,” you warn grumpily.
“Is that even possible?” says Rin, shrugging, entirely unconcerned. She has adapted to this prison stay very, very quickly. But you must admit that she is right. A mage of your esteemed caliber should not be messing up a spell of this level, misspellings or no.
Subversion is not exactly a simple spell - in fact, the complexity of its magic could rival any spell of B-rank and above – but it is a fairly efficient one. Rin was able to pick up traces of lingering magic with her demonic eyes and – somehow, to your utmost surprise – give you sufficient explanation to devise a counterspell. Your new magic requires a mental spell to have been cast on the subject beforehand; regardless of the first spell’s source, your spell is able to piggy-back upon the strings of magic that have altered their mental state, subverting it to your own purposes. At this moment you are only able to offer very subtle suggestions and manipulations, but you think this will be enough.
What piques your curiosity more is the person who cast this spell in the first place. According to Rin, the spell has apparently permeated not just the first and second floors, but goes all the way beyond the fourth floor. From what you have managed to discover about Queen Bee, you are fairly certain she does not have the power to pull off such a stunt. It has to be someone else, but who and why?
With the limited knowledge and power you have, you cannot rule out any magical traps lying in wait to counter a counterspell.
Unfortunately, it is too late to consider any other path of action.
By committing yourself entirely to this path, there is no other recourse left for you to turn the tide on the final day of voting. Nothing else will work in time. You had spent the entire day working on the spell and sleeping; whatever little support you managed to drum up on the first day has been mostly wiped out by Queen Bee’s outreach efforts.
This is the current status of the votes:
Erdrick – 5%
Queen Bee – 95%
With – 50% – of the tower population yet to cast a vote.
***
A. Cast Subversion as soon as you can and attempt to exchange the vote totals to be in your favour. If anything goes wrong with the spell, you will be able to fix it on the go. On the downside, it will also provide Queen Bee with enough time to notice the problem and execute her countermeasures, if she has any.
B. Cast Subversion a few hours away from the deadline. Hopefully this will provide you enough time to notice anything wrong with the spell and fix it, while reducing the amount of time Queen Bee has to act. Unfortunately, you cannot be certain that this will actually give you enough time to mend any problems or that it will not give Queen Bee enough time to retaliate.
C. Cast Subversion at the last second, literally. You are fully confident in your ability to write a proper spell – what sort of super-mage would you be if you didn’t – and this will ensure Queen Bee enjoys the feeling of confidence and victorious satisfaction as much as she can before having the rug pulled away from underneath her in the very last moments of her apparent triumph. That should be fun.
