[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/qSXKgkY.png[/img]
[sub][@Nanaya][@Sifr][/sub][/center]
What was with this Academy and its ever-present danger?

From the Adapa proving itself to be easily interceptable (he’d have to look into that later and figure out how to reproduce those same effects upon others) to the danger that Chloe and Hildegunde both found themselves in, it felt as if Wingram Academy was just filled to the brim with dangers that appeared entirely separate from academic progression. At least in Strigari Academy, one could presume that the destruction of flesh and the warping of mind would enable further advancements towards the understanding of Essence. But this?

Otis clicked his tongue.

This was just danger for the sake of danger, a powder keg placed besides children who’re told to play with fireworks.

He took one last glance at the seething auditorium beneath him, and left.
[hr]
Airborne he ascended, wind twisting around his limbs as he rose higher and higher. Otis had no wings, but that was why he had magic, elementalist spells granting him a flight far more controlled than Davil’s Ethos as he scanned the broadening horizon. What he sought was a sign, the crack of a bullet. If Hildegunde was in as much danger as that self-destroying message claimed her to be, then he would hear something, whether it be gunfire or simple screaming.

He had nothing from either of the girls, after all, so it could only be through a stroke of luck or a present stimuli that he found them.

Good thing there were both.

His own Adapa pinged, and he did not read the message. It had been only a split-second, but he had caught the direction in which that essence had been received, a beam of light through the treeline, where the canopy shook in response to [i]something[/i] inside it. It had to be a message for an SOS. He could expect, even, that Ciara and Iraleth would respond, breaking off their silly conflict with Valen in order to do so. Funny, that the days events conspired to exhaust both of them before their own duel in the evening would begin. At this rate, they’d be duelling with pistols rather than Ethos.

The tinkerer from the Empire had no such restrictions himself, however, only the incantation of his familiar power.

[b]“Show me wonders of this world.”[/b]

A Door opened, and through indistinct cosmos, came a board, wheeled and ensorcelled. In that moment, he cancelled his flight spell and plummeted, picking up greater and greater speed as gravity pulled him further down. His hair streamed upwards, his flesh rippled back, his clothes inflated. And his board, placed beneath his boots…sprouted wings.

Wings of canvas, like those of sailing ships, spread open and drank their fill of the air. He slowed immediately, but only because his sheer vertical descent was redirected to a diagonal [i]dive[/i], curving towards with a sheer ferocity! He had no wings, but owls preyed through the descend, not the ascent, and Otis’s eyes burned bright as his Personal Barrier encased him.

This would be [i]his[/i] first test.

The board smashed into the canopy, snapping apart before dissolving into the aether and stardust that all summoned creations were made of. Otis himself slingshotted further past, a beastfolk bullet that crashed into the scene, bounced twice, rolled head over heels, then somehow, rather miraculously, found his feet before sprinting to a stop. Was it fortune, instinct, or a deliberate calculation that found him stopped right beside Chloe?

The Door manifested and without a thought, he grabbed the half-elf and pushed her through the abyssal gap, then drew his own firearm, a musical chime sounding as he flicked off the safety.

[b]“Flee or fight?”[/b]

The Door remained open, the easiest escape route conceivable. But the pursuit of knowledge was not performed by running the other direction.