Radical!

Viorel dreamed of fire.

Fire surrounding a ballroom, the polished floor reflected their tongues and created images of an infinite inferno.

They licked his ankles as he stood under an opulent painted dome.

He was waiting for someone.

His heart was missing.

A hole in his left chest revealed the space where it’s supposed to be, only showed an empty ribcage.

The fire turns into an unnatural purple hue.

They’re flowers now.

Lavenders.

And he’s suddenly falling—

Jolting awake, Viorel was back on his bed.

Instead of a floral abyss and flashes of pinks and reds, his sight is filled with the oaken canopy of his bed.

His chest heavily rising and falling with his breath, like he’d just ran a marathon and immediately after jumped into bed.

There was a dull throbbing at the back of his head.

Twisting his neck to the side, he saw a young woman wiping the window.
Sitting up proved to be quite a task as the dull ache turned into a constant pain just above his nape when his head left the pillow. A low hiss escaped as he managed to lift said pillow and lean his back on it against the headboard.

This woman he assumed to be one of the housekeeping staff still hasn’t noticed his conscious state.

“Excuse me.” He said.

The woman’s head whipped around and she nearly knocked over the water basin by her side when she jumped off the cushioned alcove she knelt on.
She made far, cautious steps towards the door, keeping significant distance with the bed, eyes wide and glued on him.

Viorel raised a brow.

“Are you a new housekeep—“ he didn’t get to finish as she very quickly sped to the door and left his room.

Viorel stared after her. Now, why was she looking at him as if he had grown a second head? The only thing he has is a persistent migraine, physical head pain and jumbled memories of—

A deafening explosion of pink smoke.

“Don’t come in!”

Sharp teeth, bright hair, big eyes.

A sharp stab to his left temple made him wince and close his eyes.

Surely whatever visions he just saw are lingering traces of a nightmare, as absurd and vaguely terrifying as they are.

But that still wouldn’t explain the gap in his memory from yesterday to… whatever day it is today.

He figured the first thing he should do is find Nina.

Throwing back his cover and shifting to sit at the edge of the bed, he reminded himself to get some pills as a sudden ache attacked his cranium.

The door swung open before he could stand up.

Nina carried a breakfast tray, face distraught. Once she saw him regard her curiously but with his usual straight posture and observant eyes, she let some of them melt away through a sigh.

Then she eyed him sternly, much to his continuous confusion.

“You nearly gave that poor girl a heart attack.” She walked in, rounding the bed and placing the tray on his lap.

“The new housekeeper?”

Nina lit up an incense on top of his bedside drawer, humming disapprovingly at his question.

“That was Ingrid, and she’s been working here for 3 years.”

Viorel raised a brow at the assortments of food presented on the wooden tray.

It has a slice of his favourite pavlova, a glass of hot cocoa and a tiny bowl of peppermint sweets.

Nina would only give him an all sweet breakfast combo when he’s sick.

The blonde decided not to complain and pop a candy in his mouth, the frosty flavour somewhat chilled the migraine he was sporting.

“I don’t know.” He rubbed the back of his ear. “My head’s been banging like a drum. Did I hit it on something?”

Nina is never one for being subtle. So when his innocent question caused her shoulders to scrunch up like she’d just been caught with her hand in a cookie jar, he had a feeling she was hiding something.

Viorel bit the candy in his mouth, the loud cracking of the peppermint probably gave his scrutiny away and had his sister pulling in a steadying breath.

“How much do you remember?”

He waited till she slowly turned her head and met his eyes before gauging what is it exactly she was asking.

He has a sneaking suspicion.

The scent of lavender.

A petite, alabaster hand holding scissors.

Glimmering white boots.

That was just a vivid dream wasn’t it? A direct effect of his headache?

Viorel shrugged. “Not much. I remember trying to find you when everything blanked out and I had a really weird dream.” He laughed. “You were doing witchcraft, and a monster appeared in our ballroom.”

The way her pupils constricted and her lips shrunk into a thin line constricted his lungs. She looks exactly like that whenever she contemplates a lie.

Viorel placed his food tray down beside him as any appetite he may have had vanishes.

He narrowed his eyes when she placed a lock of badly cropped hair behind her ear. “Nina?”

“That wasn’t witchcraft.” She reluctantly admitted.

Her words felt like that sense of trepidation you would get when a knock on your front door in the middle of the night echoed around the house, making you expect something bad waiting on the other side.

Why was she correcting a detail only him and his sleep-addled mind would know? Wouldn’t that make the fake memory he had of her chanting in tongues in a room full of fire real?

“What do you mean?” He asked, hands folded on his lap in an attempt to stop them from rubbing anxiously at his wrists.

Nina fully faced him, the similar wringing of her hands showed her own nerves. “It happened this morning.”

-------------------

Viorel couldn’t sit still.

After acceding to Nina’s terms, he was at a lost at what to do.

“I’ll handle everything. All you have to do is support me emotionally.” She had said, kind but firm.

Being an heir came with its own baggage, but he found it harder to ignore his demoted position as an honorary wedding planner than his responsibilities to his future businesses.

Maybe that was why that morning, instead of heading over to a monthly meet-up with their parents on some five star cafe that sells croissants way too expensive to be forgivable, Viorel asked Mr. Aarons to turn back home.

He decided to take the day off; to recenter himself, relax, and try to slow down his thoughts from its mile-a-minute default setting.

That was how he ended up in the middle of the outdoor garden area. A calming cup of chamomile tea in his hand with only the wind and the birds as his company.

In the outside, the eldest Diamanté sibling was as quiet and still as a tree. Inside, he was anything but.

His left knee started to bounce. The teacup was already empty, yet the hand holding it stayed suspended for the remainder of the minute. The blue sky paired with a lively bustle of colourful flowers and plants didn’t work on healing his nerves. If anything, he felt like it was all a facade. A calm before the storm. Something was definitely brewing, and it wasn’t tea.

Viorel twisted his torso to lean his body on the backrest of his chair, absently looking back at their house.

The air smelled of lavender.

It didn’t occur to him that their shrubs of lavenders are on the other side of the mansion.

From what the staff told him, Nina has locked herself away in the ballroom. She must be hard at work if she hasn’t gone out for the past, he checked his watch— 3 hours.

Maybe he should check in on her.

Not to oversee anything, just to be a polite observer.

Viorel mentally justified his intentions and stood up, fixing the wrinkles in his navy suit, then walking back inside.

One of the housekeeper relayed Nina’s curious warning not to let anyone enter the ballroom until she was out.
It was ridiculous. Viorel thought maybe it was part of a juvenile plan to surprise him with her secret party planning prowess which is endearing, but really not necessary.
He’d already put his trust on her and vice versa. He’s fully capable of sitting back and letting his little sister handle her own wedding.

The hallways were strangely quiet. Not a peep was heard from a staff’s voice, or even footsteps.

With a slow and quiet gait, Viorel approached the polished, white door leading to the ballroom. His hand reached for the handle, but stopped right above it when he heard the only sound in the entire corridor emitting from the other side.

They felt faint, slightly crackling in nature.

Warily, he pressed his ear to the door. The sound was a voice and the longer he listened, the louder it became.

‘’— aelp ym reah… Eeht geb I… Tsetaerg seitinamuh fo lla rof—’’

Viorel lurched his head back.

What the hell?

His eyes wildly observed the door, as if the inanimate object was the one speaking in tongues to his ear.

He realised Nina was in there and without much thought, he threw the door open, hoping to see her decorating the pillars or setting up tables.

Viorel gawked at his sister standing alone in the middle of the dark dance-hall.

Spread out in front of her was a large diagram of a circle painted in red, five candles dotting different points of the shape, and an unassuming bowl presented smack dab in the middle of it, enclosed by two cups boring handfuls of lavenders.

She was chanting, her sweet voice bouncing off empty, obscured walls, turning it ghostly and shrill.

“Snoitar belec tsetaerg seitinamuh fo lla rof rossecederp eht dna yrlever fo nomed tearg O,’’

He watched in stupefied horror as she stepped forward and raised a pair of scissors to do god knows what with her back to him.

‘’Htaed ro emit fo ecaf eht ni elbaecaffeni eb ot ssenippah nwo ym hsiw I rof, aelp ym reah dna emoc ot eeht geb I!”

As her voice reached a crescendo, he stomped inside.

“Nina!”

When he calls her name, her body turns halfway and reveals parts of her hair clumsily sheared off, strands falling down to her feet in a mess.

The door behind him slammed close by itself, but he only spared it a wary glance before bounding over to his sister.

She threw her arm out. “Don’t come in!”

He was already inside, and it wasn’t like he would listen to her if he wasn’t anyway.

Viorel grabbed Nina’s arm holding the scissor, shaking the horrified woman with disbelieve

“What are you doing?!”

She looks at him with guilt and fright. She doesn’t even know what she’s doing.

“I— I’m—“

Nina didn’t get to explain further, as a neon light blanketed her eyeballs and turned them white as milk.

She shot her arms wide, releasing his hold on her.

“Ryat pniaaml, ryat phet oijn, ryat pniaaml, ryat phet oijn, ryat pniaaml, ryat phet oijn, ryat pniaaml, ryat phet oijn—“ she repeated, over and over like a possessed woman.

Glancing at the bowl filled with an assortments of familiar looking candy, and how it seemed to shine with the rest of the unholy arrangement, he guessed that to be a terrifying probability.

He didn’t have time to phone an exorcist, so he did the next best thing.

Viorel grabbed his sister’s face, shaking it back and forth. “Snap out of it!”
Even after a series of violent shaking, she still hasn’t stopped mumbling those damn words.

The glow of the candles (and the circle) increased by the second. A chilly breeze overtook the room even with all the doors closed.

The candy bowl gets filled with bright purple liquid, Viorel stumbled a step back watching it glitter like a cosmic swirl. He momentarily forgot of Nina’s frozen self in favour of peering at the curious concoction.

He didn’t see Nina pluck out a coin from her pocket, the golden surface glinted as she raised it over her head.

“Ryat pniaaml, ryat phet oijn.”

Nina throws it to the bowl.

A hand shoots out and catches the golden coin.

Viorel gasped at the sudden appearance of the appendage from inside the shallow container.

It was bluish in colour, sharp nails black as night.

It clenches its fist. The arm reaches down to the floor.

Another hand stretches out, following the first one and bracing long fingers on the floor.

Then, what looks like a deformed top half of a head slowly rose from in-between them. Wet, orange hair transitioned to a similar lilac complexion.

Terror seized his body and forced his back to fold, knees closer to the ground with shaky breaths escaping his lips.

Wicked sounds and voices of cursed beasts filled the air, hurting his ears with how loud they were.

Something peeked from the rim of the bowl.

Two giant orbs, he realises were eyes.

“What the—?!” He wheezed, feeling his heart beating nearly right out of his throat.

He guessed that the pair of hands and eyes are connected to a monstrous body and going on gut—feeling alone, Viorel scurried closer with a stupid plan.

He reaches out, his legs stretching far apart to give him as much distant with the cursed bowl as possible, and with a flick of his wrist, he tipped over the bowl.

He ran backwards and watched as the limbs folded back under the downturned bowl.

The bowl’s ceramic clattering echoed, and after it dissipated, silence was all that greeted them.

Viorel turns to Nina, breath heavy and eyes wide.

She had just regained her awareness (and pupils), holding her head in a dazed state.

“What…?”

Viorel's angry broiling rolled out in a burst.

“Nina! What the fu—“

A pink explosion erupted from the bowl.

The sheer magnitude of the blast threw Viorel away, landing his head straight to a wall and bounced him over a table, his unconscious body crumpled on the floor.

The last thing he remembered was the overwhelming smell of lavender.

Shards of glass littered the floor, the sparkly smoke filled in every corner, and an unnatural aura radiated from the middle of the room.

Nina, who was still able to stay upright, lowered her crossed arms from her face. She tried to make out a figure standing amidst the mess, but found it hard as the smoke stings her eyes.

She notices Viorel was nowhere near her. She finally spotted him as the cloud of billowing gas disperses.

Nina runs over to aid him. But she stops in her tracks, because Viorel was not alone.

Someone was standing over him.

They were quirking their head with hands on their hips, seemingly examining him.

Nina nearly whimpers.

“H-hello?” She whispered.

The mysterious being tilts their pointed ear towards her.

She waited in dreadful anticipation as they slowly turned their body, a voice starting to rise in volume.

“Whaaa—“

“—aat is up, homegirl!” A second ago they was over there and after a flash of… confetti? The non-person was suddenly right in front of her.

Nina blinked at the sudden explosion of personality.

Her eyes were unnaturally big and a dark magenta, lids dusted by glittering eyeshadow.

She watched those eyes take in her clothes then back to staring unblinkingly at her face.

“Well look at you! I love that top, it so brings out your eyes!” Her voice was distinctly female and she assumed as much with her vaguely human looking physical features.

Long, strawberry blonde hair, a small nose and a giant grin filled with rows of sharp teeth give the illusion that she’s human, but every one of those features have something slightly off about them that makes her look from uncanny to straight up scary.

With a neon coloured suit over a black leotard paired with pink tights and white boots, she also looked like she came straight from an 80’s sitcom.

Nina didn’t know if a radical demon is what she was expecting when she started the ritual.

As if reading her mind, the demon grinned. “What’s your name, cutie?”

The woman remembered her original objective and sobered up.

She grabbed the hem of her own blazer and lifted the two sides, awkwardly bowing, like one would curtesy in a dress. “I am Nina, Nina Diamanté. I seek to borrow your magical powers, O… demonic one.”

The demon seemed pleasantly surprised. “Oh, honey you already got me sweets,” she procured the exact same pieces of candy that she had offered on the bowl from the inside of her suit pocket.

She proceeded to throw the entire batch into her mouth and ate every sugar and plastic wrapper that was on her hand, then humming in content.

She surprised her by grabbing thin air and have the golden coin she threw earlier appear magically in her hold, “And this shiny gold coin,” Then also eating the metal object with a swift bite.

“No need for flattery. I’m Bombon.” The demon placed a hand to her opposite chest, bowing her torso and making the gesture look more charming than when Nina did it.

Without looking, Bombon motioned her head to the side. “Who’s your buddy there?”

“That’s my brother, Viorel.”

Bombon looked regretful when she eyed his unmoving body, the click of her tongue expressed more disapproval than pity.

“What is it?” Nina prodded.

“Bad news girl, I think he’s in a coma.”