This was a house made from the very fabric of the Everdark. Three-dimensional space was, in many ways, its own tangible thing. One of the lessons Annika's father had often sought to instill in her was that this must be grappled with in order to move across the Veil as the two did, and the funny thing about distorting the space of this realm was that many things hid within it. It was a void, an interstitial area where forgotten things congregated, infinitely wide, yet confined within its own bounds.
He used magic to build this place, a house that didn't adhere to the laws of nature anymore than the realm it was found within.
Seeing it through the same lens as the cat, Annika saw a superposition. Like various watercolor images bleeding over a solid canvas, there was the house as she had once seen it, and the house as it had once been across many years. Rooms flickered and waned away from the dark. The house was normally well lit for somewhere that shadow wizards lived in, yet the light wasn't always reaching the rooms that weren't fully there. They were impressions, old permutations of things Jack had done to the outline of his home. With time and effort, he could rearrange this space by twisting it in ways that he had yet to teach his daughter.
But when he did, the old configurations weren't real, anymore. It was like breaking walls with a hammer and then renovating what was inside. What Annika was seeing shouldn't have been seen at all.
In some of the flickerings, the hallways were longer. In some, there were less rooms and more wide open spaces dedicated to ritualistic arrangements; The kind of magic that took more than a word or a hand gesture to pull off, with practically pristine books strewn about in a way that Jack himself would never entertain.
Nochella's ears flattened whenever Annika walked near some of them.
The longer they persisted, the more they seemed to pulse. They faded in and faded out in waves, not at random.
With that done, Morris set out to deliver the rest of the letters in quick succession. He knocked on doors and left them in baskets hung up for this very purpose, down the winding halls of the Haven. It was just another day, doing this and that, whatever Rosemarie or one of the girls needed. It was easy work, and it needed to be done. He'd always made a point of keeping on top of things like this out of respect, and also out of a deal he made once. Rosemarie had been gracious enough to let him stay, and he insisted he earn it, rather than let her just house him for nothing in return. He didn't have much more left to do with the mail doled out.
Nothing mundane, anyway. He didn't notice Prudence skulking around his workspace under a veil of invisibility.
He withdrew a key from his coat, made of tarnished ivory, and slid it into a lock with no pins. The door was thicker than most, though no one would know just by looking at it. It slid open without a sound, and without a push from Morris. He walked in and left the door to slowly swing shut on its own, with more than enough time for someone to sneakily slip inside behind him. But who would? After all, it was dark behind that door. Not a single light was on, until Morris began igniting gas lamps with a match, one by one, until the room was mostly visible.
It resembled an infirmary, in a way. There was a long table covered in jars of various fluids, a shorter table with wooden stands holding up oddly shaped bones that seemed to be an incomplete project, and a set of tools in a leather bundle, rolled up for storage. The walls were bare stone and mortar, and a drain was open in the center of the floor. The room felt cold, and it wasn't just the temperature.
"Vicar," He muttered, removing his coat and layering it over a chair. "The talisman. Fill a phial with two parts water, one part laudanum, bring it to me as well. Gently, now."
Something in the dimmer parts of the room shuffled. It was tall, and there was a scraping noise.
Location: St. Eustace's School
"I certainly feel it is important to put them in their place," Silas remarked. "We live in dangerous times, Ms. Aoko. Many of these children may find themselves at the end of a blade, or at the hands of an inquisition. It is right of you to amend their notions of superiority. He had heard too many stories of a young Enlightened who had assumed their abilities to defy reason could defy bullets, stories of their abilities giving out at crucial moments when a holy man of the faith had just enough time to plunge a knife between their ribs. Arrogance got people killed, it was a rare thing in a "civilized" society, when they were allowed to only get laid flat on their face instead.
A duel did sound interesting.
"I was hoping to keep myself available, should Ingram need me with today's events. But, if you can bear with an empty-handed combatant, then by all means, I will happily take that offer." Silas was by no means the local authority on combat, even keeping in mind the boys outside. It was a mechanism, for him. A method of improving himself and keeping sharp in a world full of monsters who preyed on his kind.
Wizards. Leah wasn't great at fighting wizards, and most of these wizards were pretty damn hot, but not hot enough she'd let them win. Leah stood in front of her team, as the local tank and one of the two heaviest hitters. She had her eyes on two of them in particular, Wil and Ava, who were the toughest of them. If Leah could keep them occupied, the rest of her team could cut out the supports, Andy could handle the fast bitch, Sabine was (probably) a better psychic than the goth in the spiky hair. If it came to it, she could switch out and handle the demonic witch, but Danni was the pyromancer, not her.
That whole plan went on hold the second Prudence locked her down. Telekinetic force, making her unable to move from this spot. She'd have to go quick, but it was better if Leah hung back and didn't let them bait her out.
She brought her fist inwards and swung it out to her left, with a BANG. A hole formed in the cage, and she grabbed the edge to rip the rest of the thing apart. In one quick motion, the cage sundered and fell apart, and Leah took a few steps backwards.
There was no point in calling out what to do. They all knew their skills, they all knew what they were capable of. She wasn't Leah Jordan right now, she was Jotunn, and they weren't a bunch of kids right now. They were Excelsior, and they were going to fucking win or die trying.
Well, if the rules were broken, anyway.
Leah:
Health: 60/60
Focus: 55/60
Karma: 2/2
Notes:
Edge when attacking with Smash.
Action:
Leah spends 5 Focus to use Smash, breaking the telekinetic cage made by Prudence.
Fixing Shit ⫻ You can’t always afford to have someone else fix your car or your leaky roof. Emil learned how to do shit like that the hard way, making him good at figuring out what’s broken and how to make it right.
Scrapper ⫻ Watching a 40 year old man get drunk and smack his wife didn’t sit right with Emil when he was a kid. So he started standing up and doing something about it, and he quickly learned how to fight dirty. Going for the eyes, kicking the shins out from under someone, and the classic throat punch are how Emil beats someone up.
Mechanic ⫻ Emil works in a car shop, so the thing he’s best at fixing is usually a car. If it’s not working right, he can probably find some way to get it back into shape or hold things over for a while.
Fucking Deal With It ⫻ Emil has learned, time and time again, that shit is rough. He has the near supernatural ability to think, “It is what it is” about so many things. Whether it’s an unbelievable amount of patience or just being too tired to give a shit, Emil gets through it.
Emil is younger than he looks. His unkept facial hair and the tired look in his eyes make him seem like he’s in his late thirties, but he’s still in his late twenties. The man tends to have a battered, thrown-together “Homeless Chic” aesthetic consisting of multiple hooded shirts and old jeans worn long enough to be confused for sweatpants. He tends to dress im layers because he’s used to bring outside in the cold a lot. His hands are calloused to hell and back, and though Emil doesn’t have any kind of tattoos or body mods, you can tell he’s got some road miles on him.
Psychology ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ "Боже, черт возьми, все это, черт возьми! …What? Nothing."
MAIN GOAL ⫻ Having goals implies there's some kind of future. Emil hasn't really been in a good enough mindset of late to feel like he can make those kinds of plans. His first priority has been to get a better opportunity and find more stability in life. Emil wants to find a way to know where he's going to be in the next month before he starts planning for the next year.
PHILOSOPHY ⫻ Life isn't fair. Same shit, different day. You can expect a fair hand, but you won't always get one. When bad things happen, the best way to get over them is to get through them. Just keep fucking moving.
SECRETS ⫻ When Emil was 13, he watched a kid drown. He could’ve done something about it, but he didn’t because he was afraid he’d drown too.
SEXUALITY ⫻ Eh.
FEARS ⫻ Emil really doesn’t like being high up off the ground, it makes his head spin. Oh, and he’s also afraid he’s going to die before his life actually gets better.
REPUTATION IN SHADOW ⫻ Emil was the guy you knew in high school, and wondered about after he dropped off the radar for the rest of your life. The guy who just went completely incommunicado and left no trace of where he went with his future. People don't know Emil, they knew him at some point or another in the past, before he fell to their wayside, and then another wayside again and again.
FLAWS ⫻ Emil habitually assumes the worst about a lot of things. This new job is probably going to fall through, that girl his friend from work introduced him to probably isn’t interested, the rain is probably about to leak through the roof, and so on and so forth. He isn’t used to looking at things positively, and he expects people to turn their backs on him when he isn’t looking.
Backstory ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ "It is what it is."
Once upon a time, there was a sleepy town assailed by an army of the dead for reasons unknown. Day after day, night after night, the Emil Kolya of this town would wade through the slain undead to take power for himself and turn it into weapons with which he would protect his hometown. He became a kind of gritty, respected hero that took the opportunity for magic by the horns and put himself on the level of Adepts. People were fascinated by the sealing techniques he cobbled together that shouldn’t have worked, but did. And after that chapter of his life came to a close, he went on to become a well-renown monster hunter with an arsenal of magical tools at his disposal.
His counterpart from Shadow wasn’t so fortunate.
His sleepy town didn’t have much going for it. It was about half an hour from a big city known as Hayweather, just far enough not to benefit from things like tourism or any kind of local business. This Emil’s parents came from Shadow’s Russia to its America in the wake of his father’s newest job opportunity. They lived in Hayweather for roughly ten years before they had a kid and decided not to raise him in such a noisy environment.
It wasn’t a bad decision. Less people, less crime, less chaos from being in such a populated area… But it wasn’t the right decision, either. Emil grew up with just a single father, because his mother had died in childbirth, the town didn’t have its own hospital and they weren’t in a position to make it to Hayweather before it was too late. And then his dad started working overtime in a remote job he held for years, both to distract himself and to deal with raising a kid alone.
And if that wasn’t enough, lots of people in the town weren’t particularly nice to him. Things sucked, he’d go to school and get into scuffles with other kids, and then go home to a place where the kitchen tablet’s chairs were stuck to the floor because they hadn’t been moved in so long. Someone in town sold drugs, and Emil had reported it for obvious reasons. That made him a few more enemies before he was even 17.
Eventually, Emil got out of high school and things at home at gotten better. His dad had eventually moved on from the past, and was in a good enough financial position that he considered heading back to Russia with his son. They both had family over there that Emil had never been introduced to, and it would’ve made things easier on both of them for a whole slew of reasons Emil didn’t fully get. But it sounded better than the shitty town he grew up in.
So they left America. A month later, they were on the other side of the planet, and with a lot of help at home, Emil learned his native language enough to speak as if he’d been born there. He met his uncle and the entire family on that side of the tree, moved into a house just down the street from them, and things were generally fine. Shadow’s Moscow was vibrant and full of things to do. Emil spent two years settling in with his dad, getting to know things and enjoying a new page in the book of his life.
It only lasted that long, though. In time, Emil learned that his uncle, Pavel, had a habit of putting hands on his wife and arguing about politics in a way that wasn’t very safe for drywall. And his kids who were several years younger than Emil himself occasionally had bruises on their elbows when they walked past his house. Emil’s old man wasn’t too happy about it, but he always told his son that family was the only thing they had at the end of the day.
What his father hadn’t said was that he was sick for a long time. Emil found out when he came home from a day out with a girl, to find that Pavel and his wife were both there sobbing over a corpse with a gun between its fingers. He left a note saying he didn’t know how long he had to live, and that he wanted to leave America because he feared it wasn’t very long once. Emil’s father didn’t leave any indication of what he had, it could’ve been cancer or it could’ve been early dementia. But no one ever found out.
Emil had no choice but to move in with his uncle’s family. Pavel didn’t mind, neither did his wife Irina. But Emil eventually got to a point where he’d break Pavel’s face in half when he caught the man abusing his own family. So by the time he was 20 and unable to get into college, he had to move out and find a job.
The next few years were a blurry, stagnant haze until the day Emil stepped down a hallway and saw himself staring back.
Abstraction ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ "A shovel? What am I supposed to do with-"
TYPE ⫻ Agent
ABSTRACTION ⫻ The Gravedigger
ABSTRACTION DESCRIPTION ⫻ When Emil fell into Kindle, he found an oversized shovel embedded in concrete like a sword meant for a king. It absorbs the essence of anything it is used to kill, alive or undead, and uses that as fuel to conjure up dead things. Recently killed creatures can be resurrected, ghosts can be summoned. The shovel acts like a battery for death, which Emil can pull out and used as a way to sustain the minions. Living things killed by the magic shovel are collected as corporeal zombies, while immaterial things like a ghost allow it to summon something without a physical body.
The undead summoned by the Gravedigger are copies of the things it killed. A dead squirrel, a dead human, or perhaps a dead monster. The shape and size is replicated in either flesh or in ectoplasm, and the summon bears the same physical capabilities as it did in life. A ghostly crow is smart enough to solve problems, an undead human can open doors, and an undead horse can carry people to and from place to place.
LIMITS ⫻ No matter the conditions of the undead summoned, they’re products of the Gravedigger. Unless they originate from elsewhere, they’re on a timer. These undead lack an internal source of power, unlike other zombies or ghouls that can exist indefinitely. These undead have to be nourished by Emil, using the internal well of death that the Gravedigger builds up. If it depletes fully, its only use is as a hefty tool for cleaving and bludgeoning.
The Gravedigger can technically summon several undead at a time, but it drains faster with each one. Three undead active at a time will drain the shovel three times faster than a single, and more complicated undead affect this. Emil could summon a small crowd of undead squirrels and they'd collectively take as much power as an undead human.
WEAKNESSES ⫻ (DO NOT FILL THIS OUT, I WILL PROVIDE IT FOR YOU)
Other ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ "Yeah. This is rough."
Anyyyything else?
THE.GRAVEDIGGER
| Death’s Authority |
"For when the unquiet dead get too loud."ORIGINS & CREATIONS: | The Gravedigger was created by Emil Kolya of Kindle during his childhood, as a way to get through a horrific crisis. An undead invasion occurred and no one came to help, so he figured it out himself. |
TYPE: | Necromantic Weapon |
LOCATION: | Kindle |
NOTABLE OWNERS: | Emil Kolya of Kindle: Creator of the Gravedigger |
ABSTRACTION-GRANTING: | No | .............................................................................
As a kid, Emil Kolya of Kindle once spent three long weeks in a town beset on all sides by the undead. Having no magical experience beforehand, he had to learn quickly or die try. So he grabbed the closest thing to a weapon that he could find, a hefty shovel, and started slashing. Zombies were dismembered, ghouls were tossed into holes filled with flammable material, and the occasional ghost had its face smacked in. It worked for a whole, but then the undead intensified.
As more and more them appeared, Emil eventually worked out a method to use their power for himself. He learned a method of dealing, but his novice skills meant that he bit off more than he could chew.
The Gravedigger is a long shovel, big enough to be used as a spear, with a handle made of death driftwood. The head was originally polished steel, but has since ossified and now resembles cracked bone. It is a vessel for necromantic energy, eating death at every opportunity- Anything living or undead killed by the Gravedigger is drained of whatever kept it going, and this power can be used to reanimate or summon the dead.
Every time a zombie is laid to rest, or a ghost is smacked out of existence, its captured essence allows it to be brought back out. Undead summoned this way are stripped of all their innate power, and so they have to be sustained by the Gravedigger’s internal well of death. Without this power, a corpse will begin to slow down until nothing keeps it moving, and incorporeal undead will simply fade until there’s nothing left.
”My dad had a saying… a philosophy, if you will. You see… all of us are playing the same game, sitting at different tables with the same dealer. We get dealt our own cards. Some hands are good, some are bad, but you can’t change them out.”
”But the game always ends the same. You can play it safe, keep from taking risks. Bet the minimum, don’t get greedy. You might outlast a lot of players that way. But that’s not how the game was meant to be played.”
Marlen took a contemplative sip from their water bottle, while this guy startled rambling about life and poker hands. The longer they listened, the more a smirk grew on their face, which quickly became a full-on grin. This guy got it. Life was too damn short to hedge bets and sit on the fence. Marlen learned that a long time ago, back when they were a kid- Just fucking do the things that are worth doing. That's why they're never easy.
"Just looking to enjoy my night without ruffling any more feathers."
"Yeah... Reasonable, I think," They commented, without even reacting to the cigarette smoking being blown around. "I remember being... seventeen, scared of the world and not knowing which was was up. You'd think having a god hanging over your shoulder makes taking risks easier, turns out they don't really help much when they just want you to figure that stuff out yourself." One time, they nearly got kidnapped off the streets because a cop really didn't like that Marlen had said they didn't have a home, despite toting a guitar around. The only reason they weren't arrested then are there was because no one thought Marlen's gangly ass would have smacked the living shit out of the man with it, ran like hell and throw a pan flute in another direction to cause a noise that distracted the son of a bitch. What was the point of life if no one was going to live it?
"But..." They turned around, back to the bar, and looked over at Trinity who had chimed in. "How many people just got here, and are doing... That?" They nodded their head in the direction of Blair, who had just been getting busy as all fuck right in front of the gods and everybody. "I mean, Apollo sure never told me we were getting up to that on night number one. I was just telling some stiff fellow how I didn't know there were this many of us on the whole planet. You'd think they're trying to do something about that up on the mountain." Marlen wasn't convinced there wasn't something in the wine and vodka and whatever the fuck else was up on the shelves. Hell, maybe Dionysus was here tonight and had a bet with Aphrodite to see who could cause as many unintended pregnancies as possible or some shit.
It seemed a bit weird when the gods had siblings of their own. Zeus and Hades were brothers, weren't they? Were they all just going to segregate based on that, and wear badges or something to denote that?
Or maybe tomorrow, everyone would stop trying to fuck everything that moved. Maybe.
"It's not like we're in a crazy sex cult or anything, are we? That'd be pretty weird... Anyway, no hangovers for me, thank you very much. Name's Marlen, cool to meet you both."
Location: Hall of Ancients, Strange Academy Grimoire: Skills: Current Outfit
He and Connie weren't sharing a room like last year, it seemed. Or a coven for this year, in fact. Unfortunate, but it was a big school, there'd be plenty of chances for them to run into each other. Agatha Harkness was old, and in Rohan's experience, old things were dangerous and powerful. She wouldn't have lived as long as she had if she didn't know what she was doing, so he was willing to believe the idea of covens being important. A group of magicians, wizards and witches that shared your skills and gave the strength of numbers. It made sense, even if it seemed a bit much to call it "the truest form of sisterhood." It was just power, as far as he understood it. Better access to secrets Rohan didn't know about, people to depend on when a spell went wrong. Anything that bled could be killed, and Rohan liked being alive. Most people did.
He stuffed his knife away, and kept the key for now. A candle, And he didn't notice anyone else holding a key with a candle on it. Oh well, he'd find out later when he walked into the room made of candles, probably. Rohan walked over to them, giving Finely ample space and sticking mostly behind the others who gathered. Finely was the only one he actually recognized, the rest didn't seem familiar at all to him. Sariel seemed eager to get going, do something, and apparently bleed him dry in the process. Like that was happening.
"I'm here, I'm here," He said, taking his sweet time. "What are we up to first?"
Rohan wasn't in any kind of hurry today. He just got here, he knew the place, and they had a whole year to do... Whatever abominable things he suspected this woman had in mind. Honestly, if it was just a little later into the year, he could take a damn nap on this floor right now.
”What the hell are you two saying?” Leah asked, as Percy and Dorian fell into a multilingual bitching contest. Man, they seemed like a married couple with the way they got heated. This game clearly made people lose their cools if it only took two or three rounds for all morale compunctions to fall to the wayside. Leah really didn’t see what the issue was. It was just a game, and Venom was way more fuckable than Loki or Mystique… Not that Leah would ever bring herself to say that exact combination of words out loud for any reason, but he was.
”Guys, we’re right he-“ And then they were gone.
Dorian wooshed them both through the floorboards and it sounded very much like they were fucking at this very moment, by what Dorian said when he switched back to English. They were just… Doing that? With their parents in the house? With them in the house? Leah was completely and utterly stunned for a moment.
April started cackling. And she wasn’t the only one.
The sheer absurdity of this night made Leah laugh.
It was loud, completely uninhibited,and an unserious grin was stuck on her face. It almost made her tip over, and she leaned slightly into Sabine with one arm, having been caught off guard by the that this stupid game elicited this reaction. She couldn’t remember one time she’d ever laughed at anything. Holy shit, she needed that.
”Fucking- what the fuck, Dorian?” She griped, greatly amused by things, as if he could hear her. ”Yeah, sure, just run off and start fucking. No, don’t worry about us- We’ll be fine. Is this what people do in sleepovers?!”
This wasn’t so bad, actually. She felt… Floaty? That was a word, maybe.
”Hm… Fuck Miles? Yeah. Why not. Marry Gwen because I’m not beating the allegations at this point, and kill Spider-Man because I am not fucking anyone She-Hulk is close to.”
And then Gideon finally pitched in. Truth or Dare?
Oh.
Leah’s head whipped around and gave Andy a supremely confused look. Didn’t she and Zari break up today? Unless Gideon didn’t care. Or… Maybe Andy didn’t.
”…I don’t know whether to regret what I said or not.”
It wasn't so long ago that this was all there would ever be for her. She was destined to be hollowed up, bereft of everything that she was and would be. Her mutant abilities were pared down and built up, tweaked and twisted, to suit him. The ghost of a man that never truly lived a real life. Ryder never would have known the feeling of sun on her skin, the feeling of real food, if it weren't for the fact that she got astronomically lucky. And now she was back here, in the mind of the man behind it all. The fancy, idyllic head that was somehow meant to accommodate him. Whatever the old man was thinking, they weren't on the same page.
Every telepath had a unique "Feel" about their powers. Ryder's was oppressive, it felt like a person was being rent from the inside when she looked in their head, and it was anything but subtle. Even as Xavier made attempts to soothe Umbra, it felt forced. Not because of Xavier's skill, but because Ryder was in the psychic vicinity. Her unwillingness to relent radiated off of her, and it had a way of smothering the minds of others, as the X-men had learned lately.
At the mansion, Ryder had just enough time to understand a few things. Not so much internalize them, but she certainly understood certain principles. That most mutants, hated as they were, didn't experience what she had gone through. They couldn't relate to her. They didn't have it in them to really get how she felt, even though they tried. But the other half of that was the undeniable fact that Ryder couldn't relate to them.
It was so tempting to eradicate Umbra right now, in the most painful way possible. An agonizing death, a hurtful, spite-fueled one. He could feel every scrap of his mind being peeled away into nothingness. He could feel it over and over again. She had more power than that, she could do so much to him. But there lied the conundrum she was facing.
Ryder couldn't relate to people who lived something that resembled normalcy.
But she wanted to.
The astral form of Ryder raised a hand.
"You wanted me, you wanted to skin I'm in. You wanted to kill me so you could live."
YES, screamed the universe.
"You were going to hurt people to get to me. And when you were done, you'd hurt so many fucking more. I can feel it on you, you inhuman piece of shit. You never learned what it's like to be alive, you never learned what it's like to care. And thanks to you, neither did I."
And the memories overhead quaked. Cracks formed in them, things unable to be perceived much like a nonexistent color. Fissures among thought, the gaps in knowing.
"I'm going to fucking unmake you. And then, I'm going to unmake everything you ever did to me."
She sounded so cold. Ryder had more rage than a hundred people, and she wasn't expressing any of it. Those aphotic lines between the bounds of cognition widened, until cracks began to form.
Leah was good at thinking things through, but clearly not that good. Of course April would ask about what she had just said.
”Well, I mean- That’s… We could- Maybe?” She finally managed, suddenly not making any eye contact with anyone. ”Really didn’t think that far ahead, honestly. I’d-“ God, would she do that? It didn’t have a whole lot of weight to Leah, but she knew some people cared about it. She might have been more sure about marrying people if it weren’t for the breakup they had with April… Leah would've married them both at the sane time, perhaps. The thought of it appealed to her a lot more than just one person, but it was complicated. Having more than one partner in a relationship, who were each actually dating each other felt better than only one person. Leah didn’t just feel love for people, she felt a lot of it.
But things didn’t work out. April had to take care of herself. That wasn’t her fault, but it left Leah in a weird place. Not bad, just weird.
”That- I’m not getting into that right now, actually,” Leah decided before pivoting like crazy into the next round of absolute degeneracy.
Venom, Mystique, Loki? Alright.
”Venom as in just him, or attached to someone?” She asked. Either way, symbiotes were pretty formless and, though she wouldn’t admit it, she agreed with April. A lot of… Flexibility in that one. ”Assuming he’s attached to someone who isn’t awful, yeah. Fuck Venom. Marry Loki. Because of his shapeshifter thing and because he’d probably have other things to worry about. Kill Mystique, I guess. She’d probably try to kill me first and I'm not taking the chance.”
Location: Hall of Ancients, Strange Academy Grimoire: Skills: Current Outfit
Strange Academy was always a warm place. Not exactly warm physically, though it was that too. The lights and lanterns around the place, the general hum of people unafraid to talk to one another, and the shared reason for being here all made the grounds feel alive. All the ambient chatter and the musical number being played was more noise than Rohan was accustomed to. It had been some time since he'd been here, in a place as social as this. After the last semester ended, he'd gone back to the place he was most at home in, the forest. No forest in particular, but just the forest. One copse of trees here, one rolling field of moss there, he went wherever they weren't so immediately noticeable. And when they showed up, he just moved on like an animal did. Those woods were always quiet, and not like this.
He walked onto the school grounds loaded down with all his things. His sword, his staff, his mask, and all the usual magical bits and bobs a wizard of his ilk often carried. Rohan looked as if he hadn't even stopped to do more than the bare minimum to make himself presentable before coming back to civilization. And that was because he didn't. He stopped by a creek somewhere far off to wash the soot from a campfire from his face and hair, cut away sheets of moss from his clothes that were keeping him mostly dry since he didn't need them here, and smoked some cuts of unnatural from a dead beast or two before he set foot in New Orleans.
Here, people were keeping to themselves and interacting like there was a preconceived level of noise deemed acceptable. Rohan was used to dead silence, it was almost a surprise coming back, and it always was. Showing up to the hall he'd never been in before was interesting. The sheer size of the statues was impressive. The cursed wizard pondered them with a bite of rabbit, as he walked along.
Professor Croan's nose wrinkled as Rohan approached, a handkerchief quickly coming up to protect his nose. "Ah. The reason why I submitted resolutions on student hygiene."
"Croan! Don't be so closed minded! 27 billion light years away is a planet whose mystics let their natural oils build for several revolutions before using it as a fundamental resource in their castings. Perhaps young Rohan is experimenting!" Mikkail reprimanded enthusiastically.
"Ah! You're Rohan! I hadn't put a name to a face yet but I cannot wait to get my hands on you." Sariel shoved her colleagues away and madness glinted behind her eyes. "I have wanted to get your sap in my lab for ages and now that you’re my advisee, we'll see how far we can push the limits of your curse."
Rohan gave the three a lackadaisical smirk. ”How about you say that a little louder, just in case someone didn’t catch that, miss?” He didn’t like flaunting that his soul was twisted and gnarled. Whoever knew it knew, whoever didn’t just didn’t. ”Don’t mind me…”
He walked up to the fish tank labelled “Catch one.”
Curiously, he withdrew an old hunting knife, made from bone and metal, sharpened to a wicked point. He flipped it around into a murder grip and leaned over the tank. Rohan watched the fish swirl around, waiting patiently for them to slow down. And eventually, one floated a little higher and then came to a near stop.
Thunk. He skewered one on the blade and promptly pulled it free. The fish distorted and blurred, until it wasn’t a fish any longer. It was a key, dangling off the blade by its ring. It looked like a candle, was that on purpose?
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