When Evelyn found out about dark magic, it was like entering another fantastical world.
It took a lot of digging. She had already been interested in the online Internet community around witchcraft, which was getting some attention from some YouTubers. Although the YouTubers were laughing at it, writing it off as all bullshit, Evelyn couldn't help but be intrigued. So many people swore by it- it couldn't be bullshit. At least, not all of it.
After poking around through a lot of witchcraft sites, learning about incantations, spells, witchcraft items, exploring magic of all kinds, she found one blog on the fringes of the witchcraft community which talked briefly about dark magic, linking to a forum dedicated to it.
When Evelyn read through the forum, she was hooked and there was no going back.
Dark magic was a blanket term for magic that could more severely impact your surroundings or yourself than any light magic could, but at great risk to yourself or others. Dark magic includes, among others, blood magic, demonology and the related discipline of sacrificial magic, and, what drew Evelyn in the most, psychemancy.
Psychemancy covered many different practices under the same umbrella. Generally, it involved manipulating one's mind through the use of magic, whether that be your own or someone else's. Like altering one's personality and controlling others's minds.
But what was really what got her hooked, was pariopsychemancy- the act of creating a new being, called a pario, to share your brain and even your body.
Evelyn was intrigued the most by one forum comment from a pariopsychemancer who shared their experience with a newcomer to the practice:
"It's a beautiful, messy, enthralling experience. I created my pario, Charlie, three years ago to cope with loneliness. Since, she's been with me every step of the way, and I wouldn't give her up for the world. The thing with parios is that, if you do them right, you have a best friend who understands you and knows everything about you for the rest of your life."
Evelyn had always been lonely, which is why pariopsychemancy sounded so wonderful to her. She had always found it very difficult making friends. She only had one friend, and that was her online friend Tori.
She had told Tori about all this excitably one night, but Tori was very skeptical. "It sounds like complete bullshit," Evelyn had un-delicately put it. But Evelyn, for whatever reason, couldn't- or refused to- see it as bullshit. It had sounded too real to be fake.
But ultimately, Evelyn knew- or at least, she thought she knew- she wouldn't go through and try it herself. Pariopsychemancy was considered dark magic for a very good reason. According to some masters of the practice on the dark magic forums, it could very well go wrong, especially if one was a newbie to magic. The soul one created could be malicious and want to hurt them. It could take control of one's life, potentially even push them out of their own brain, destroy them from the inside.
And that sounded too scary to be worth the risk for Evelyn. And, having never done a magical practice in her life, she knew she would definitely get the ritual wrong.
No, she was content to just read about it and be interested in it from an outsider's perspective, she told herself. She thought that perhaps one day she would get the courage to make an account on that forum and ask a few pariopsychemancers her questions, but she felt that would be the farthest she'd get.482Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm7Oeoz3IMV
Tori started ignoring Evelyn.
It was obvious to Evelyn. In their mutual Discord servers, Tori was talking to people, but she wasn't answering Evelyn in DMs, and if Evelyn tried talking to her in one of those servers, she would just not reply as if she wasn't even there.
It was hurting Evelyn. She didn't understand what she had done wrong. Five days after it started, she was getting so upset and afraid that she confronted her, demanded to know what she had done wrong and how she could fix it.
Tori didn't reply.
Evelyn had been alone her whole life, and now her only friend was ignoring her- it felt too painful to bear.
Evelyn's parents were starting to notice something was wrong, and she was doing her best to hide it from them. She had been visiting a therapist who she didn't like and had only just recently managed to convince everyone that she was fine enough to space out the sessions in months. Evelyn desperately didn't want them to reschedule it to every week like before.
But Evelyn's parents were definitely realizing something was up. Her crying spells were obvious. Her distractedness was obvious.
Finally, one day, Tori did reply to her.
It was a simple message. "Sorry, Evelyn, I'm done. We had a great friendship but you're getting too clingy and I feel suffocated. It's clear you're not going to change so, bye."
Evelyn's first thought was to plead and beg her, to tell her that she could definitely change, but Tori had blocked Evelyn everywhere, and left all their mutual servers. Evelyn felt Tori didn't even give her a chance.
Evelyn was so angry, upset, hurt, and in pain. Tori had been her first and only friend, and she had lost her. She felt destined to be alone, to be hated, to be ignored. It felt like a stupid, cruel joke the universe was playing on her.
Finally, Evelyn couldn't take it anymore. She turned back to pariopsychemancy. She knew she should've considered all the possible consequences. She knew she should've thought it through. But at the time, she was so in pain, that she felt there could be nothing worse than this. If the pario I create turns out to be malicious, if it tries to kill me and replace me, I don't care, she thought. It felt like it would be a relief, even.
So she pored over the ritual, memorized every step that Saturday. That night, while her parents were asleep and nothing could interrupt her, she would begin creating a best friend who could never, ever leave her.
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