Wanda and Viper watched, thoroughly absorbed, yet to Daisy this priceless Darkhold was no different from a heap of rocks and gravel. She couldn't feel the faintest trace of power from it.
"You really can't feel anything? The Darkhold pulls at us so strongly. Maybe you've got a pure soul?" The moment the words were out, Viper twisted her lips; she didn't believe them herself.
But Wanda, off to the side, nodded hard. To her, Daisy was exactly that kind of pure and good soul, a messenger of God, a person without a shred of darkness in her heart.
"Let's just watch quietly..." Skipping right past the question of her own purity, Daisy joined the other two in waiting on Agatha and her reading.
Unfortunately, Daisy lost interest after a while. To her, Agatha was utterly unremarkable: no sound, no light show, certainly no thunder and lightning, just a half-blind, half-deaf old crone muttering to herself.
Unlike Daisy's blank-faced bewilderment, Wanda and Viper grew more rapt the longer they watched. Wanda looked on the verge of some breakthrough, her own frequency speeding up and slowing down by turns, her face flushing and paling, her nostrils flaring slightly, her lips seeming to murmur along with whatever the old crone was chanting.
Miss Wanda was a caster type. That much Daisy could understand.
What she couldn't understand was Viper. You're a rogue class. You can pull something out of a book of magic too?
This was why Viper was such a smooth operator. She was far more perceptive than the clueless Wanda. She glanced left and right, her eyes darting as she sized things up, and asked, testing, "You can't see this phenomenon?"
Daisy looked back at the old witch. Not even bargain-bin special effects; what phenomenon, exactly?
"The red flames, the black miasma, the smoke coiling like a vicious dragon, you can't see any of it?" There was a flicker of challenge at the corner of Viper's eye.
Once she'd confirmed Daisy really couldn't see it, Viper shook her head with the air of someone facing a hopeless case. She didn't just shake her head, she sighed too. "A born warrior, truly..."
Daisy could practically feel three irritation marks popping up on her forehead. That was an insult, wasn't it? It had to be an insult!
"If you can't see it, go play somewhere else and quit yammering." Viper's tone was that of someone scolding a child, and it made Daisy furious. Holding her breath, she fired up every ability she had, determined to see something, anything.
But sheer willpower triumphing over nature was, in the end, just a nice wish. Talent was talent; you either had it or you didn't.
She stared until her eyes ached and still saw nothing. In the end, Viper bestowed on her the title of "magic-illiterate," and Daisy went off to the corner to draw circles in the dirt and sulk.
Big deal! Once my Eternal genes finish developing, my ridiculously long health bar will scare the daylights out of you sorcerers!
To Daisy, the old witch was just putting on a mystical act, but Wanda wore the look of someone who'd gladly die that evening so long as she'd grasped the truth that morning, and Viper kept nodding along too, as if she were unraveling untold secrets of the universe.
She waited, bored out of her mind, for ages. The old witch seemed to be deliberately working against her, turning the pages slower and slower as she went, often taking more than ten minutes per page.
Viper stopped watching and sat down to wait alongside Daisy.
"Learn any profound spells?" a certain someone said sourly.
Viper laughed until her features scrunched up, her chest shaking, then raised a palm. A pale green halo of light slowly took shape in her palm.
"No way. You took all of two glances and you can already cast spells? Wait. This spell of yours, I can see it. What's the logic there?" Daisy didn't get it. The green light in Viper's hand, the spells of the Ancient One's sorcerers, those she could see. So why couldn't she see the magic from this book?
"It's a matter of tiers, I suppose. What's recorded in that book is so high-end it's reached a level that can't be described, can't be understood, and that a certain someone can't see." Viper started off sounding plausible enough, then twisted the ending around to land one more jab at said certain someone.
The greatest form is formless, the greatest sound inaudible? That was the only way Daisy could make sense of it.
"And what's that one good for?" She pointed at the green halo in Viper's palm.
"It's strengthened my mastery of poisons."
They talked in low voices. A full two hours passed before the old witch closed the Darkhold. It was clear she'd gained a great deal; her clouded old eyes were two shades brighter than before.
Daisy and Viper kept a wary guard. The old woman's power seemed to have grown, and if she turned on them now, they'd have to retreat at once.
The old witch's eyes fixed on the ceiling, her gaze seeming to pierce through countless spaces; Daisy half-suspected she'd gained X-ray vision too.
"If I sever your connection to that one, your lifespan returns to the normal range. Given the state of your body, you'd have thirty years left at most. Do you still insist on going through with it?" The old witch's voice was faint and far-off, like someone talking in their sleep.
Viper's reply was iron-firm. "I'd rather die than be controlled."
The room fell silent for a moment. The Scarlet Witch seemed to pick up on the tension and moved to stand beside Daisy, making her own stance clear.
The old witch walked deeper into the house, beckoning for them to follow.
The inner room was even more cramped than the living room, if that junk-cluttered space could even be called a living room.
Carpet, wood flooring, none of that here.
Countless odds and ends were strewn across the uneven dirt floor, and a sharp, fishy stench had Daisy wrinkling her nose, though Viper and Wanda looked entirely unbothered.
"Take off your clothes and lie down here." The old witch pointed at the ground.
Without a word, Viper peeled off that ultra-revealing combat suit of hers. Bold and brazen as she was, she naturally had nothing on underneath.
Before lying down, she shot Daisy a pleading, entrusting look. Daisy gave a firm nod, secretly mapping out a few coordinates. The instant anything went wrong, she'd grab the other two and teleport, then come back later with a full army to finish the old witch off.
The old witch had Viper lie spread-eagle while she set things up off to the side. The cramped room left nowhere for Daisy and Wanda to stand.
"Can you fly?" Daisy asked Wanda.
She got a blank, baffled stare in return.
Partly to observe without getting in the way of the old witch's spellwork, and partly for intimidation—at least Daisy considered it intimidation—she wrapped an arm around Wanda's waist and lifted off, looking down on the old witch from above.
The old witch acted as if she saw nothing, producing a dagger and beginning to bleed Viper. A major artery was sliced open, and blood came welling out in pulses.
The skin was slit open, and then some black-gray powder was sprinkled into the wounds. Viper, a stunningly alluring beauty, was cut here and there until she'd quickly turned into a figure drenched in blood. The atmosphere in the room was eerie and arcane.
"Daisy, this won't leave scars, will it?" Viper wasn't afraid of pain, having been through far worse, and Daisy thought the whole thing was child's play; only soft-hearted Wanda, in a voice as faint as a mosquito's, thought to ask.
"It will. But that's the price. Magic isn't some street-corner sideshow, and a demon god isn't a being mortals should come into contact with lightly. This, this is the price." The old witch's manner toward Wanda was markedly different, at once a warning and an instruction.
In keeping with that attitude, the way she looked at Viper was the way one looks at a passing stranger. As for Daisy? She never once gave Daisy a proper glance, as if she simply didn't exist.