Riven Wight

Deleted

“You wanted a change?” Izzy nodded thoughtfully. “A bit surprising, but I understand that.” She had, after all, wished for the same thing a few days earlier, a change, an escape from the town, from everyone in it and the memories it held. “I guess we both got a bit more than we bargained for.” She gave a small snort, then sighed, her head turning to glance around the classroom.
She looked back to him when he straightened and collected one of the shopping bags.
“Oh, gee, thanks,” She rolled her eyes with a smirk at Trevor’s comment about looking a mess, and took the sack when he offered it. “You try hiding out here for a week and looking any better! I’d kill for running water and a shower right now. Figuratively speaking, anyway,” she added quickly, then looked in the bag as he continued. Realizing what sat on top, she closed it quickly. “I’m sure everything will fit fine.” She gave him a thankful smile. “I won’t take long to change. Though, with that comment, maybe I should make you look at me as a mess a while longer.” She placed the bag of clothes on another desk. “Thanks, Trevor.” She looked to him. “I owe you, big time.”
Izzy waited for Trevor to leave. She rummaged through the bag, pulled out what she needed, changed quickly, then went to the door to give Trevor the all clear.

Schooled in Magic

@OfWindAndRain
Let the magic, adventure, and madness begin! Hope you like reading. xD

I apologize if Jazelle's part isn't the best. I'm used to having a few posts with a main character in normalish situations to get acquainted with them before thrusting them into action.

Let me know what you think!

Schooled in Magic

Full Name: Jazelle Natali Sanders

Nickname: Ella or Jay

Age: 16

Appearance: Jazelle has long, strait blond hair and honey-brown eyes, which she inherited from her mother. She has a small frame, stands at only about 5’ 3,” and weighs about 114 pounds.

Distinguishing Marks: She has a rather interesting birthmark on her right shoulder blade. She has always thought it looked somewhere between a wonky S and a wind-blown leaf.

Clothes Wear: She usually wears fairly lose clothing that she more likely than not got from a goodwill store. She always wears a hoodie, tying one around her waist in the summer months, making it her signature garment among her few friends.

Powers/Abilities: Currently unknown on the magic side. Otherwise, she has a knack for finding quiet, out-of-the-way places, sneaking around, and running into trouble.

Weapons: A butterfly knife with a four-inch blade one of her few friends gave her. The handle is silver with slanted blue stripes. She usually keeps it on her person at all times, just in case.

Personality: Jazelle hates her home life. She does whatever she can to avoid returning home, often staying out long past dark or even, on occasion, spending multiple nights with friends. Because of that, she always has a couple extra sets of clothes shoved into her school backpack, which she usually keeps with her. Because of the way her father has always treated her, she trusts virtually no one, letting in only a few close friends. Though she does occasionally complain about things, Jazelle tends to keep quiet about her home life and personal issues, preferring to deal with things herself, be it a problem with a friend, boyfriend, or even an injury. She refuses to admit she can’t do something, and won’t ask for help.

Major Negative Traits: Rebellious nature, especially when it comes to rules. Has a major issue with authority. Can’t stand people who act like they’re better than others, and does her best to bring those kinds of people down from their high horse. Hot-headed. Impulsive. Extremely cynical.

Major Positive Traits: She is one of the most loyal people you will meet, in the rare event you’ve gained her trust as a friend. She is fierce, and is not afraid to stand up for herself or fight for what she believes is right. Determined. Independent, but to a fault, making this a double-edged sword. Fairly street-smart. Adaptable.

Family: Parents: Natali (deceased) and Henry Sanders.

Ticks and Tags: Ticks: Twiddles hair when nervous. Bites cheek when thinking. Likes to play with her butterfly knife. Tags: Mutters a lot. “Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do.” Though she holds herself in a manner that often arouses suspicion from her superiors, she has a fire in her eyes and always walks like she knows exactly where she is going, even when she does not.

Other: She has a silver charm bracelet her late grandmother on her mother’s side gave her. It once belonged to her mother. It has ten charms dangling from it: an angel wing, a green clover, a blue stone heart, a peace symbol, a colorful enameled turtle, a gold shooting star, one purple and one brown cat’s eye stone, a red rose, and a mirrored oval. She never takes it off.

Short Bio: Jazelle never got the chance to know her mother, who died the day she was born. With her father blaming her for her mother’s death, she was placed in the care of her grandparents—her mother’s parents—a few hundred miles away. They were loving people whom she would have been quite happy to remain with until she came of age, but tragedy struck them. A couple months before she turned nine years old, her grandmother fell deathly ill.
Not wanting the child to have to watch her grandmother waste away, her grandfather managed to talk her father into taking her back in, albeit reluctantly.
Before Jazelle left, her grandmother gave her what has become her most treasured possession: a charm bracelet that once belonged to her mother.
Feeling abandoned and disposable, she packed her things and made the trip to live with her father in a large city, which was a far cry from the small town she had grown up in.
When she first arrived at her father’s, he seemed, at most, callous, paying her little attention save when she had need of some sort of necessities. She quickly learned how to cook and accomplish various other chores on her own, often times being left to fend for herself while her father took on more hours at work to avoid being home, and providing only the bare minimum.
She tried once to talk her grandfather into taking her back some time after her grandmother died, but he only said that it was better for her to be with her father. He rarely contacted her besides sending a birthday card each year.
At school, she tended to be a loner, keeping to herself and trusting no one. She made her first friend in her new city when she was ten, a girl by the name of Kaylee. Though it took Jazelle a long while to warm up to the girl, she ended up giving her trust to her new friend and let her into her little circle. She frequently spent time with Kaylee, staying the night at her house as often as she could.
Over the next six years, she made very few other friends, her small circle amounting to the meager number of three: Kaylee, Brice, and Tess. During that time, her father’s disdain toward her only escalated, her presence reminding him of his loss that much more as she grew into a young woman who resembled the wife he had lost. He often abused her verbally, especially on nights when he came home after having one too many beers, reminding her frequently what he thought of her.
She found solace in walking the city streets on her own during the days she could not contact her friends, which her only means of contact was via either landline or making the trip to their homes. Knowing she often walked the city streets alone, Brice, whom she has recently noticed she has budding feelings for beyond friendship, gifted her a butterfly knife for her fourteenth birthday, which only her friends bothered to celebrate.
She could not wait to get out from beneath her father’s so-called “care,” which she made a point to never mention to anyone when Kaylee’s mother once threatened to call Child Protective Services. Since then, she has made up whatever excuse she could to the other adults in her life for fear of ending up in the foster system. After all, now she only has two more years before she can legally get out on her own, which is exactly what she planned on doing.
However, little did she know, one fateful twilight near a set of train tracks would bring the life she knew to an end.

---

---

Appearance: With a pallor that would make Death himself jealous, he is tall, has lengthy black hair he keeps tied back in a lose ponytail, and a slender face, his skin tight and accentuating his chin and cheekbones. Unlike most other Necromancers whose irises are red, his eyes are different, showing his superiority; The whites and irises glow red, the intensity strengthening when he uses his dark powers, and his pupils are milky white. He also has a scar from a burn running diagonally over his left eye.

Real Name: Unknown Gender: Male

Age: Unknown. Appears somewhere in his late twenties to early thirties.

Known Reputation: Kyrell has mostly managed to avoid a well-known reputation, though not the radars of some magicians, word of him only recently coming to the White Council in frightened whispers. It’s said that he came from nowhere, a Necromancer with an unnerving amount of control and power. Perhaps, it’s rumored, one of the most powerful Necromancers in the known world. He has been spotted many times wreaking havoc in various wars against the Allied Lands, and caused a few battles’ victory to fall to the Necromancers.

Personality: Unlike most of his ilk, Kyrell seems calm and collected. Well, some of the time. Though he loathes spending a great deal of time studying magic and other such spell work, he has, through the years, forced himself to do just that. He can switch from his calm appearance to a heated rage on a dime (with room to spare), and is a proud and vain soul. His main desire is to bring down the Allied Lands and make the world feel the wrath of his revenge, to see Necromancers rule as they once did in ages so long past that even the earth has neigh forgotten that dark bit of the world's history.

Bio: (Sorry, I’m lazy right now. I’ll get something here... eventually.)

Schooled in Magic

The silvery light of the moon dusted the houses and treetops of the Unnamed World, the intrepid light daring to creep where even the bravest of men feared. Hidden deep within the forest, a fortress sat, its rotting appearance holding only a ghost of the grandeur it once possessed.
It’s decrepit rooms and halls yearned for its life to be restored. It longed for galas to be held, for women in flowing gowns and men in ornate suits to stroll, to dance over its cracked floors and once reveled great hall. But, alas, the walls could only dream.
It watched, forlorn and desolate, as a sickly shade of green began licking at one corner of the moon, slowly tinting the world in an eerie shade of green.
The Fatum Lunaris had begun.
One of the doors leading to the courtyard opened, the rusted hinges squealing in protest. A man in a robe so blue it looked black strutted through the courtyard, its once fine stones now cracked and spoiled by dirt and gnarled vegetation as the forest tried to reclaim it. A pale hand gripped a thick tome against his chest. The gems in its decorative binding glittered wickedly in the remaining moonlight.
A second figure lumbered behind him with an uneven gait, the hood of a brown cloak pulled over its head and casting its face in shadow. It held a torch ahead of it with a bony hand, the tight, thin skin the gray of death.
They stopped at the center of the courtyard where a crumbling pedestal sat. The man gently placed the book atop it and opened it to a page marked by a satin ribbon. He ran one of his long, sharp nails down the ancient runes scrawled on the page, the firelight of the torch making the ink glint as if it had been freshly written.
He glanced up to the moon, its silvery light all but consumed by the green. A moment passed, and the last sliver of silver disappeared with a rebellious flash. A grin spread over his face.
It was time.
He turned from the pedestal, extended a hand out in front of him with his fingers bent like claws, closed his eyes, and tilted his face to the sky. Reaching for the magic that surrounded the world, that lived in every being with--and without--breath, he began chanting. His soft, sibilant voice echoed preternaturally around the courtyard. Slowly but surely, with every arcane word, he molded and shaped the code of magic with both voice and mind. The nexus, the pocket of magic resting unseen within the earth and radiating beneath the fortress, strengthened his power, the creatures that fed off it kept at bay by protective enchantments.
As he neared the end of his spell, he opened his eyes. The whites and irises glowed an unnerving red, his pupils a haunting milky white. A dark grin spread over his strong, slender face as he uttered the last of the spell he had studied so ardently. With an exhale, he released the magic that had gathered around him.
An electric crimson glow surrounded his hand, the sparks dripping slowly to the ground. He straightened his fingers and the glow shot from his hand to the cracked stones of the courtyard and collided with a blinding flash.
At last, after all these years, years even the wisest in the land could only fathom, a Child of Destany would be his.

---

---

The sound of running water and dishes frantically clinking together filled the main level of the small house. Though it looked like a quaint, happy home from the outside, the lack of pictures on the walls, the bare minimum of furniture, and the dreary, worn aura that hung heavily inside quickly dashed that illusion.
Jazelle, her long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, stood at the kitchen sink. She cast a few nervous glances to the clock on the stove, trying to hurry and finish the dishes from the dinner she had made herself before her father got home. A strange, foreboding feeling had twisted at her stomach all day, and her head had been pounding off and on, putting her in no mood to deal with him, even for a minute.
Finally, she placed the last of the dishes in the drain board, dried her hands on a towel, and set to work wiping up the stove. She had just wrung her washcloth out in the sink, when she heard a car door slam shut in front of the house.
With a gasp, her attention snapped to the small window that looked out to the driveway. Her father had gotten home early.
Panicked, she dropped the washcloth in the sink as he strode toward the house. She sidled up to the small portion of the wall between the open doorway and refrigerator, her body just slim enough for the wall to hide her from anyone entering.
She held her breath as the front door banged open, her gaze steady as she waited. She heard her father muttering to himself, his gruff voice agitated, followed by the thud, thud of him kicking off his shoes at the door. She mentally traced the sound of his steps as he traversed the short hall, then came into her view. He passed by the kitchen, his thick shoulders tense and salt-and-pepper hair a sweaty mess from a day of working construction.
As soon as she had enough room, she slipped out unnoticed from her hiding spot and slunk in the opposite direction, careful to avoid stepping on the couple creaky boards in the carpeted hall. She cast him frequent glances as he headed for the television in the living room visible from the hallway. As quietly as she could, she got into the hall closet to grab her backpack from where she had deposited it upon returning home from school. If she was lucky, maybe she could catch Tess, one of her three only friends, once she got home later that evening.
“Jazelle!” Her father’s gruff, harsh voice made her want to shout back, but she stopped herself, her face twisted in hatred.
“Gotta go,” she grumbled as she hurriedly slung her backpack over a shoulder and all but flew out the front door.
The door slammed shut, cutting off a string of obscenities the man had begun shouting after her.
Though she knew he would not follow, she ran down the driveway, keeping a quick, steady pace as she raced through the familiar streets of the neighborhood. Only once she had put a few blocks between her and her house did she slow. She took a couple deep breaths, the hatred and anger on her face and glittering in her honey brown eyes diminishing a fraction.
A slight chill of early October hung in the air, and the leaves of the trees were in transition between summer’s green and the fiery shades of fall.
Jazelle took another breath. She pulled the hair tie from her hair and shoved it in a pocket. Fully shouldering her pack, she placed her hands in the pockets of her current favorite hoodie, its soft fabric a light shade of gray.
With her shoulders slumped, head bent slightly, and her hair cascading around her face, she slowly began her walk toward Tess’, taking a detour leading to her favorite set of train tracks.
The sun began to fall rapidly as she went. By the time Jazelle reached the hill looming above the tracks, the red and orange fingers of twilight brushed the clouds in the sun’s last meager attempt at retaining domination of the sky.
She came to the edge of the hill, its side lined with bricks. A set of tracks ran about six yards below, one end rounding a bend and the other disappearing into the gloom of a bridge tunnel. She stood atop one of the bricks and looked down, admiring the visual of the tracts and multi-colored foliage.
As the sun sunk ever toward the edge of the horizon, the long drone of a train horn sounded from around the bend. Jazelle stood there for a couple more moments as the sun sunk ever lower.
Deciding she should get going before the night fully engulfed the world, Jazelle turned from the tracks as the train rounded the bend. She took a couple steps along the line of bricks half buried in the dirt. As she made to step onto the solid earth, the brick beneath her wobbled, then dislodged.
She shouted as she lost her balance. The world seemed to slow around her as she fell with the stone toward the tracks. The oncoming train blared its horn once more as it barreled toward her. She closed her eyes as she fell, her heart drumming in her throat, and waited to hit the cold tracts, for the monster of an engine to ram into her, every gruesome image of someone hit by a train running through her mind in an instant.
A flash of crimson shone from behind her closed eyelids, and her back hit the ground with less force than she expected, her elbow hitting a stone. But, instead of the hard iron tracks beneath her back, it felt like cracked stone, and the rush of the train had been replaced with an eerie silence.
“That’s it,” she breathed, her heart still pounding. “I died. I’m dead.” At least it hadn’t been as agonizing as she had expected, being ran over by a train.
An airy, yet harsh laugh that sent shivers down her spine made her open her eyes. She gawked at the two figures standing in front of her; a cloaked figure stood as still as a statue, its face hidden in the shadows of its brown hood despite the torch it held. But, it was the second figure that held her attention. A man dressed in robes with what looked like a slivered scar from a burn running diagonally over one eye, beamed maliciously down at her. His pale skin was pulled taught over his face, accentuating his chin and cheekbones, and his dark hair held a tint of orange in the torchlight.
“Dead?” the man said with a wicked grin, his voice almost serpentine. “Far from it, my dear!”
Though his gaze made her want to cower away, Jazelle could not look away from the man’s unnerving eyes. It was not the red where the whites and irises should be that captivated her, but the swirling milkiness of his pupils. Something more than their appearance made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
“What the...” Breathing heavily, she scrambled shakily to her feet, the weight of her backpack still on one arm.
She took a staggered step back and cast her gaze around the shadows clinging to the corners of the courtyard where the firelight did not reach. The dead of night had replaced the rutilant colors of twilight, and the sweet smells of late summer filled the air in place of the crispness of early fall.
Maybe I missed the tracks, she thought, swallowing hard. Got knocked unconscious. Lucid dreaming’s a thing, right?
“I admit,” the man continued in a dejected tone, regaining Jazelle’s attention as his grin turned to a frown. “I had expected someone more... experienced,” he took a step toward her, and she staggered back, “but, I suppose, you’ll have to do,” he finished through a sigh.
She backed away when he stepped toward her, and placed her arms in front of her. “Whoa, whoa,” she said, patting the air. “Hold up.” She took a deep breath and crossed her arms, reminding herself it was just a dream--an uncannily realistic dream, yes, but a creation of her unconscious mind nonetheless. “It’s rather rude to not start with introductions, you know.”
The man cocked his head and a sly smile quirked at his thin lips. “Of course,” he purred. “How rude of me.” He took a partial step toward her, and she took the same back. “I have many names, but here, I’m known as Kyrell Valdis, master of the dead and the greatest Necromancer to walk this earth.” He smirked at her. Irritation flashed in his eyes, perhaps at Jazelle’s lack of recognition. “And who,” he growled, “pray tell, might you be?”
The way he looked at her, as if she was a sickly deer and he a prowling cougar, made Jazelle want to shudder, but instead she tapped a finger to her chin, doing her best to hide her fear. “I?” she began in as grand a voice as she could muster. She uncrossed her arms and shouldered a single strap of her backpack. “I am the girl who got away. Toodles!” She said the last in high-pitched mockery, then sprinted for an archway she could just make out across the crumbling courtyard.
But she did not get far.
She screamed and fell to her knees as it felt as if every nerve in her body had decided to flair, a crimson film coating her vision. Her pack fell to the ground beside her.
I thought you couldn’t feel pain in a dream?! she thought through a moan.
A tisking sound came from the man as he approached, stopping just in front of her. “You must know so little, to run from a necromancer,” he said aloofly as she looked to him with gritted teeth. He had one hand raised and fingers stiff in a tight curl, a glittering dark red mist dusting his fingertips. His eyes glowed fiercely with the power he used. “But no matter.” He created a fist and waved his hand dismissively.
Jazelle inhaled as the pain disappeared as quickly as it had come. Breathing hard, she tried to hurry back to her feet and reach into her pants pocket to pull out her butterfly knife, but the man gripped her wrist in an icy grasp. He pulled her toward him, wrenched her arm behind her back, then grabbed the other.
She tried to pull away, to kick back at him, but to no avail as she felt him bind her wrists with a course rope.
“The less you oppose me, the easier it will be for you.” Kyrell shoved her toward a deteriorating door leading inside, making her stumble forward.
She pulled at the binds around her wrists, trying to slip her hands out from them, but had no luck.
Kyrell placed a firm hand on her shoulder, his long nails digging into her hoodie, and marched her toward the door.
If this is a dream, she thought, closing her eyes for a moment, I’d like to wake up now.

Mystic Orphanage (Aristocles and Siaya Dragalorn)

Did it go as well as you had hoped?

Deleted

“Oh?” Izzy cocked her head quizzically at him as he began. She nodded when Trevor checked his terminology.
Izzy shook her head as he leaned back on his chosen desk. “Rumors don’t cause anything besides a hype among those spreading them, or anger in whoever they’re about," she began, sticking to her original thinking. "Rumors don’t make truths, let alone bring beings into existence. Truths are what spread into wild rumors.”
She regarded him when he finished. “That’s right, you were, huh? So it shouldn’t surprise you that you found one!” She gave him a halfhearted smile, then sighed. “Trouble likes to seek people out. Go looking for it, and you’re bound to collide.”

Deleted

Izzy cocked her head at Trevor’s nervous laugh, then raised her eyebrows when he voiced blaming himself. She let out a laugh of her own at the ridiculousness of it.
“Yes, it’s your fault my brothers drove me to get out of the house," she said sarcastically as she placed her arms behind her and leaned back, paying little attention to the rubble she felt beneath her palms. Between her favored woodsy environment and the past week of bunking in the school, it had all but become normal. She sighed. “I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time is all. That’s how it happens. But if that is the case, why don’t you make up a rumor for me that will get me out of this without having to duke it out with two more hunters?”

Deleted

Izzy had been relatively surprised at Cerasus’ rather aloof response to her bringing Trevor into the loop. Though part of her still worried about dragging him into this world of aberrations--with herself included in that category, she refused to refer to them as beasts or monsters--part of her felt that, if she did not talk to an outsider, to someone who knew as much as she did about this obscure side to the world, she might explode. And Trevor seemed to be a good guy, even, as much as she rebelled against it, perhaps a good friend.
So, with a quick check of the time, she managed to get a hold of Trevor and arranged their meeting.
That day, she had difficulties sleeping with everything running through her head, from what she planned on telling Trevor, to the conversation she and Riley had had. There was something about their conversation that had nagged at the back of her mind, as if she had missed something important. As, at long last, she began to doze off, her eyes snapped open as it hit her: unless Cerasus had told him about it, there was no way Riley should have known about her incident in the sun. Unless, of course, he had been there, watching them.
She inhaled and sat up. If he had been watching them, then their first meeting, him just happening to be passing by in time to save her, became far less like a happy coincidence.
She glanced to the door of her chosen classroom, thinking she should bring this to Cerasus’ attention in case he had not realized it.
It can wait until tonight, she decided. With that, she laid back down, using the backpack she had packed as a pillow, and did her best to get some sleep.

* * *

Izzy woke before the sun had fully set, hoping to lead Trevor to the school and begin her explanation before Cerasus awoke. With the hunters still in the town, and the barrier over the school, the rotting building seemed the safest place for them to talk. She waited at the door for the sun to sink below the horizon enough for her leave, then rushed out to meet Trevor and bring him to the school.
When she began her tale, from beginning to end, she paced in front of him, her arms moving in emphasis as she spoke. Once she began, she found everything pouring out, any filters abandoned. She cast him frequent glances, watching his expression and reactions carefully.
Upon finishing, she stopped pacing and stood in front of him. She straightened the bottom of her plain t-shirt nervously as she waited for him to say something.
“That’s what it looks like, yeah.” Izzy sat in front of him, her legs crossed. Her usual light camouflage jacket, now more of a vest with the remaining sleeve carefully torn off to match the other, sat discarded atop her backpack in a corner, her staff leaning against the wall beside it.
She glanced to the closed door, then looked back to Trevor, her voice low as she voiced her concerns from the previous day. “And then there’s Riley. He says he’s a neutral party, but if he’s been watching us this whole time, he has to be after something. And who knows how long he was watching Cerasus before I came into the picture.” She shook her head. “You know, you’re taking this a lot better than, well, most of humanity would.”

Deleted

Izzy responded to Riley with a simple, noncommittal snort, then looked up when a voice floated from the classroom. Though it still held a hint of the childlike voice of Cerasus, it no sounded far more mature.
She looked to Riley, then followed after him as he headed into the classroom. She came to a halt just inside the doorway when she saw the new Cerasus standing in place of the child. She glanced around the room, wondering if he had a stash of dated school uniforms somewhere, or if that was another vampiric ability.
“Nothing like a nutrition-filled arm to make a young vampire grow up healthy and strong,” Izzy said, looking Cerasus over.

The Collector (2) [Closed]

“Fascinating indeed!” Soren said, unfazed by Marianne’s words, but Nikolai noticed, to his relief, that Soren gripped the hand he had extended behind his back with the other, nonetheless. The outgoing twin straightened. “It’s kind of like the Tootsie Pop. How many feathers do you have to pluck to get to that point?” He tapped his chin, a look of profound contemplation settling over his face as he stared at the raven.
Nikolai rolled his eyes as he sat his jacket-turned-pack on the floor and pulled out a pack of Neapolitan wafers. He opened it and started munching. If you get us killed because you had to find out, he thought to Soren, I'll bring both of us back to life just so I can kill you myself.
"Don't be such a party pooper!" Soren whined, making a face at Nikolai.
Nikolai glanced to Shawn with a raised eyebrow as the boy grabbed a can of beans, and gave a complaint. He reached over and brushed his fingers against the label. At his touch, the decorations on the label shifted to show an animated corn-on-the-cob with a farming background, though the contents of the can would still remain the same. The corn character began to do a tap dance over the paper as Nikolai pulled out another couple wafers.
Soren absently grabbed a few of the wafers as he watched the raven fly to the table by the armchair. “I hear birds that smoke don’t live as long as those that don’t.” Soren glanced to Lusso, chewing on his stack of wafers and sending a rain of crumbs to the carpet. “You might want to tell your pet that. It’s bad for his health.”
What’s she talking about? Nikolai thought at Scarlet’s comment, trying to redirect Soren’s attention to something of greater importance than the bird. He looked up as he stepped toward Alexandra to get a better look at whatever the girl was fixated on, Soren following him.
“Well, that’s an odd place to put a picture,” Soren mused. “It’d look far better more that way,” he pointed to the ceiling a couple feet to the right. Despite his relaxed tone, his eyes did not move from the picture.

---

Faira had just closed her eyes, her tired body begging for the rest. However, the sound of Marianne’s voice made her tense, and she opened her eyes when she heard her name. Her brows furrowed for a moment at the woman's comment, then her eyes widened when she understood what Marianne meant. She jerked her head from the leather armchair with a gasp and scooted away from it, staring at it with a horrified expression, hating Marianne that much more.
Noticing Rosaline standing unstably, Faira forced herself to her feet and stepped toward the living doll. She gave the missing pieces in Rosaline’s legs a worried look. “Are you going to be okay?” she asked as the woman’s legs began to glow.
When Rosaline spoke, Faira let out a long breath and nodded. “Right. And we have a limited time to find it in.” She ran a hand through her mousy hair, her voice shaking slightly as she finished, paying Alexandra little more than a quick glance as she stared at the ceiling. Only when Scarlet pointed it out, did Faira actually bother to look up. She looked at the artwork as well as she could from where she stood, careful to avoid standing under it.
She glanced to Lusso, momentarily wondering who the "we" she was referring to might be, and shuddering at the thought that someone undesirable might barge in at any moment. She returned her attention to the picture.
“Any idea if that means anything?” she asked no one in particular, then cast a glance around the room, looking for anything that might lead to an answer on its own.