Ian- The Academy- Midday

After a few seconds of reprieve his body spasmed and he witnessed a vision of the horned demon from his hallucinations digging its claws into his chest, he heaved with pain and managed to hold down the last thing he’d eaten. As the Professor beckoned him he fought off the vision and the pain and followed Reates. 

Ian followed the strange professor out of the press of people towards one of the exits. His fingers had tightened around Fidrieon without him noticing. He ignored the voices in his head, he’d long since become accustom to Koshmar attacking him with hallucinations and voices. The experience was bordering on surreal for him as Koshmar was clawing at his subconscious and this professor’s accent and syntax were eroding his conscious mind. As he stumbled out of the press of people he looked up and met the professors scrutinizing gaze. Barely processing the question he nodded “Angel tore it out this summer, they keep telling me it healed but It still bothers me” unthink he rolled the shoulder and massaged it with his right hand. Suddenly pain lanced through the shoulder and he just about went to his knees as Koshmar dug up the memory of the pain from his subconscious and shoved it to the front of his mind. 

Opening his eyes he saw the butterfly on his shoulder and blinked, staring at it as it gently beat its wings. “Koshmar one day I’m going to kill you, I don’t know how you figured out how to fake the deck you bastard but I’m going to kill you” Ian dug in his pocket and pulled out the deck of cards again. He shuffled through it furiously and not finding what he expected he did it again. Ian was convinced he was dreaming. Maybe he’d collapsed in his apartment and everything up till now had been Koshmar leading him on. But the deck had 53 cards and two ace of spades’ in it which meant he should be awake. Finally Ian sunk to his knees and let the cards spill onto the floor in front of him. If he couldn’t tell dream from reality Koshmar could lead him to do all manner of things outside of his sleep period. Ian closed his eyes and tried to control the swell of panic in his chest. This couldn’t be happening. How had Koshmar faked the deck? Ian knelt on both kneels slack jawed eyes flickering across the scattered cards, how?

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Lazarus- The Academy- Midday

Lazarus took in the press of people in the ballroom. Tracing lines and flurries of essence trailing from the people and their instruments. It was a riot that his sight took in but his mind filtered through it picking out relevant details and feeding them to his conscious where he classified them as: Interesting, noteworthy or inconsequential. 

Lazarus rested his left hand on Esperacchius, it was a bad move as he wasn’t expecting the jolt of emotion it shot through him. The logical portion of him forced the memories into a contained portion of his mind preventing them from interrupting his thoughts.

Suddenly a rather furry feeling object brush against his leg. Immediately his sight filtered out everything related to essence and he looked down at the cat rubbing against his leg. Only it wasn’t a cat. Or was it? Lazarus reached down calmly and picked up the crystal cat. It was a truly fascinating construct. “dear friend you are interrupting my study of the environment. Lazarus quite calmly held the cat in his left arm against his chest while he stroked it gently like he would a normal cat. 

To an outsider the exchange would have been truly strange. A young irishman in clothes that were two hundred years old holding a cat made of crystal studying the flow of people “Okay friend, who sent you to say hello?” He gently scratched the cat under its chin. Lazarus returned to sifting through the essence curling through the room. He caught note of some confluences of essence that weren’t attached to anything living he could see. “Hellu?” he turned the o into a u as he picked out a few of them about four yards out interspersed in the crowd. “wee little things” Lazarus’ brogue crept into his speech.

 Humming The Night Paddy Murphy Died Lazarus gestured at one of the confluences. Using Enforce Will he gently pulled one of the butterflies to him. Dropping the essence sight and holding the cat in his left hand while he held the butterfly suspended above his hand. Lazarus couldn’t actually see the thing as it was still reflecting its surroundings. “Now then laddy what ‘re you? his you was long and he frowned as he heard himself talking. ‘Why the hell was he using his accent?’ Shaking his head he went back to peering at the air above his hand “Promise I won’t hurt tcya” He released the anomaly without harm and waited to see if it would manifest

Absent mindedly he scratched the cats head, there was some truly amazing alchemy that had gone into it. He’d never really researched manipulating living beings physiology as it always seemed like a messy task. The dead were always so much easier to clean up after and there were fewer moral questions. The rational part of his mind and the moral part of his mind grappled for a moment before deciding to call it a draw and they both backed down since he’d long since come to the conclusion that fussing with the dead was easier than hurting the living. Something black and slimy writhed beneath the surface of his conscious. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Oh hell no, both the moral and logical parts of his mind jumped on the black THING and beat the shit out of it letting it slide back into his subconscious. Blinking he put his hand on Esperacchius, it suffused him was a warm glow. He didn’t know if the memories or feelings would get to the cat as he hadn’t a clue if it was intelligent but he suspected it might be.