Member
Lilpeepz
Antlers
Morose
Birdboy
NoriWasHere
teenangstlife
Hope Lover
shylarah
In the dining hall of Strange Academy, Root nestled into a chair beside his master, who was sitting with his back against a table with a snack he snatched from the kitchen. He picked away at the food while pondering the events of earlier. Sariel seemed like a damn lunatic, and yet also seemed like another option on a dwindling list. It was a pretty eventful day, he never mixed his magic with four other people before. If one of the modern world’s forefront artificers didn’t have a solution for his predicament, no one did. If it wasn’t in the Neverish, he wasn’t particularly sure where it’d be.
The owl by his side made a mrp noise, half asleep.
Connie, nose buried in a notebook in one hand, food in the other, lifted her head long enough to glance around for a place to sit. She saw Rohan brooding at one table and made her way over to him.
“Good afternoon, how was your first meeting with your coven?” she asked, sitting. She marked her page, and closed the book, her attention now on Rohan and her food. Her day had been frustrating. Even after talking with Ravoux she was annoyed at Croan. Connie was starting to think that her default state with Croan would always be annoyance. It was like he tried to be annoying.
”Bloody, thanks for asking.” Rohan stuck a plastic spoon down in the bowl. ”We made a magic heart out of metal, meat and wood, and I think I’ve got the honor of being the one person on Earth whose blood Finley doesn’t want to consume.”
Connie frowned at the description, pausing in her bite of food. “Gross. Alright. Uh, Finley’s magic comes from using blood, that’s impressive. We just stared at a statue, well not just, we discussed it too. It seems that a human was transformed into the statue. I’m considering trying to transform him back into flesh. My concern is going insane, having all of my magic drained and possibly dying. You know, classic Strange Academy school days.” The last part was dripping with sarcasm. Though, the statement itself was uncomfortably accurate. “It was less bloody, though Ravoux had me help prepare some rabbits with her.” She shuddered slightly, looked down at her food and sighed. She was going to struggle to eat the rest of it.
”Any way you can put a barrier between it and you?” He asked, changing the subject. ”Give it something separated, so it only eats that instead of you? Probably has to be a lot if it’s a whole statue, but you could take your time with it.”
Connie leaned back in her seat and considered Rohan’s suggestion. She made a slight humming noise, then clicked her tongue. “My biggest concern with that would be that I have to touch the object I am transmuting. Even cloth prevents my transmutation from being effective. If Barty, and Jake have something they can provide as assistance, then maybe. I expect Barty more than Jake to have an idea. I can bring up the suggestion to them during our study session. Barty is aware of my talents. I also would be concerned that if I don’t complete the transmutation quickly the person trapped would not be revivable. I don’t even know if he will be now. I’ve never done something this large before. I’ve never had a whole person turned to stone, and then I attempted to turn him back before. And whatever did that to him is still connected to him. I assume it is this box thing in his arms.” Connie opened her notebook and flipped to the page with the rough sketch of the statue, showing it to Rohan.
He looked at it and realized he had no idea what he was looking at. ”...Yeah, that doesn’t look like a tree to me. If that block is the source of it, has anyone ever tried chipping away at it? Hammer and chisel, just cut away from the hands and body?”
“I don’t know,” Connie huffed. “The library’s information was scarce. I am now waiting to get to the notes that Croan claims to have. However, he withheld them until we could look at the statue with fresh eyes.” She rolls her eyes. “I love being kept in the dark. But considering this thing is a couple of hundred years old, and Croan has been working on it almost since day one, by sending hundreds of young witches into the meat grinder so to speak, I expect it is possible someone has tried that. I didn’t see any sign of it, but I didn’t look for that specifically. Hmm, but maybe if I can get his hands into flesh and pull the box away so I can focus on transforming him back into flesh without the box there. That could be a good approach. Have Barty or Jake pull the box as soon as possible from his hands. It would be nice to save the man’s life, but I don’t know if that is possible.”
”Hmm.” Centuries of throwing people at a problem, with hundreds of possible approaches to magic, and the vampire guy still couldn’t get the man out of the statue? Rohan was curious now. ”If he’s actually still alive in there, how does anyone know he wants to be set free?”
Connie shrugged, flipped the page to show the face of the statue. The pain of the transformation painted clearly there. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if that is the goal Croan wants. I think he wants the box. It eats magic. Jake said he could taste the magic in it. Could sense the flavors of Barty and Croan’s magic within it. He didn’t sense mine, which makes sense because at that point I hadn’t interacted with it. So it doesn’t eat ambient magic, just what is sent into it.” Connie shifted, and then sighed. “What about you, what is your mystery? Anything I can give advice on?”
”We’re going into the Neverish. Not the Haven part, but anywhere else. I think, more than anything, we’re just exploring to see what happens. The heart we made is an anchor so we don’t get lost in there. Marino took us to the gate, and didn’t tell us much about what’s inside. Just that it’s dangerous.”
“Well, good to know our group isn’t the only Mystery with the potential for insanity and death. The Neverish is a chaotic realm. It is attached to ours, deeply intertwined, it is a good thing you have an anchor as getting lost is easy. You should be prepared for the reality to twist, and the rules to change in the blink of an eye. Supposedly within the Neverish are magical secrets, or if someone could harness the magic of the Neverish they could fundamentally change themselves permanently and entirely.” Connie tilted her head, the movement bird-like. “Hmm, you’ve never had any adverse effects from traversing to and from Haven correct? That is a well established path so the chaos there is less. I would suggest packing extra supplies, be prepared for something that you think should work to not work, and vice versa. Many have lost their way never to be seen again, others just their minds. Find something that keeps you grounded. That anchor your group made will at least give you a compass to come back if you get lost. Who all is in your group? You said Finley.”
”Me, Finley, Franklin Stein and Annika Hawthorne-Falling Star. One of them is a shadow wizard, the other makes things that are alive. He didn’t have anything alive with him, but I’m imagining it’s flesh golems or something.” Rohan bit into his food again. Root ruffled his feathers in the seat.
”Either of those sound familiar?”
“Well I know Franklin fairly well. He’s the guy you go to if you want a working phone. I don’t know Annika Hawthorne-Falling Star. She must be one of the new students. I do remember seeing the shadow creatures while everyone was tripping balls last night.”
Rohan chuckled. ”Yeah, I think I offended her when I turned that magic candy down. Showed her around the workshop I was using last year, Root took a liking to her.”
Connie shrugged, “If she finds it offensive that someone doesn’t want to consume a magical drug that’s on her. I’m glad Root likes her.” Connie smiles softly at the little owl. “I was supposed to have four people in my coven as well. But one of them is missing. Pancho, the guy with the colorful familiars. He is a dorm mate too, and I didn’t see him this morning.” She frowned. She had spent the day considering the Mystery, not wondering what happened to her roommate. “You know Barty, obviously, and then Jake is one of the new people too. It turns out he is an amnesiac so I’m going to have to see if I can help him with that.”
”How’d he get into a place like this, and into a coven if he can’t remember anything? Is he just here for his own safety, or…”
“Great questions. I wonder if he applied before the amnesia, and doesn’t remember applying.” She shrugged. She turned her notebook to a new page and wrote that down, as well as several other questions she had in mind to ask Jake. “I did already tell him I’d help him with reading, since he can’t remember how to read either.”
Rohan and Root exchanged a glance.
”...He can’t read. At a magic school where everything’s recorded in books. Yeah, that’s rough. Do I even want to know what magic he does?”
Connie looked up from her notebook. “As far as I can tell it just happens, which implies some form of Chaos magic. I know precious little about that type of magic. But considering he licked one of my stones to get a literal taste of my magic I don’t particularly want to know more about his type of magic.” She shuddered. “At least he didn’t try to lick me. He would have learned that I am capable of turning his flesh into stone if he had tried.”
Great. Another magical being around this place who loved getting way too comfortable with people to access their magic. Because of course there was another one. Why wouldn’t there be. Rohan drummed his fingers along his leg. ”Watch your back around him. Either he’s malicious or just plain foolish, but either way, that’s a liability when there’s magic being thrown around. Don’t get too hurt you can’t sort yourself out, alright?”
Connie smiled, she appreciated the concern. “I will. I have no desire to be hurt. Just because I can heal it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt when it happens. Thank you. If I think he is a danger I will let you know.”
”Good.”
There’s a lapse in their conversation, where Rohan just seemed to stare into nothing.
”Marino’s giving me access to some things, after I told her about the curse. Some books and artifacts that aren’t normally opened up to most people here.”
Connie sat up straighter. Rohan’s curse had been vexing to Connie for the years they knew each other. She wanted to help more than she could currently. At least she had been able to keep it from getting worse.
“Do you want help?”
”If you’re offering, then sure. I’ll have to get into that stuff before I know what it can do, but there’s magic that can change people permanently. She mentioned that any curse can be broken, I told her that’s not an option either way. I think Marino’s just happy to get her hands on me.” He thought back to the way she looked at him like a damn maniac when they first met. The woman wasn’t alright in the head.
“I am always happy to help you, Rohan.” She frowned as Rohan described how Marino had reacted toward him. “I am starting to think the professors only became professors to use students and not to foster the future.”
”Wouldn’t surprise me. I’m not convinced Marino isn’t a few crayons short of the box. She lit us up with some magic that damn near had me on the ground. Without warning.” It made his blood scream being under that effect. ”Maybe she’s just that excited about experiments, I dunno. Definitely had enough tools to set everyone up with, though, so she’s got to know what she’s doing at least.”
“Hmm, I think I’m going to not trust any of them. Keep cards close to the heart.” She considered her choices. “I don’t like that I can’t trust the coven. Barty is fine enough in the correct setting, but overall I would check that if he gave me a penny it wasn’t wooden.”
”Can’t say I blame you, being the guy who always packs a magic staff to Barty’s little den of hedonism so I don’t get brainwashed.” They were both in good company, being paranoid around witches like him and his brother. ”Sometimes I wonder if he’s never tried because of that, or if he really just doesn’t care.”
“I appreciate that you do bring your staff. I know at least one of us will not get manipulated that way. Alright, as pleasant as this chat has been, I want to swing by my room and see if Croan actually followed through and left me notes. I want to start going through them. I’ll see you later.” She picked up her unfinished snack and stood up.
”Yeah, I got things to do, I’ll be around.” He gave her a smile and finished off his noodle bowl. Root chirped at Connie, without opening his eyes.
Connie smiled back, turned to leave, she paused, set her things down, and dug into her bag. She removed a rabbit's foot. “Almost forgot. Made these today with Professor Revoux.” She held it out for Rohan.
”Huh.” That fascinated him. ”You chopped up a rabbit? Didn’t know you did that sort of thing, always thought I was the one who did,” he joked.
“I’d rather not have, but it was the task I did with Professor Revoux. She is my advisor. It was already dead, but I did have the distinct displeasure of skinning it. Do not remind me. I’ve already lost my appetite enough. Do you want the good luck charm or not?”
”Yeah, yeah, thanks.” He took it and held it close, looking down at it. ”People like us can’t ever get enough luck.”
Connie smiled, she did not say that she thought the rabbit’s foot was probably one of the strangest ways of claiming good luck. It had not been enough for the rabbit. Why would it be for her? “I’ll see you later,” she said instead, picked up her things and left.
