The problem we're likely to face there is that the Venn diagram of "person of significance in the Realm" and "on House Iselsi's death list" is almost but not quite a perfect circle and we're one of the handful of people outside the latter circle.
The problem we're likely to face there is that the Venn diagram of "person of significance in the Realm" and "on House Iselsi's death list" is almost but not quite a perfect circle and we're one of the handful of people outside the latter circle.
Well, fortunately the Empress is still secretly holding House Iselsi's leash and isn't letting them just go after everyone they hate willy nilly, so it's fine, probably, since that's a situation that will last forever!
The problem we're likely to face there is that the Venn diagram of "person of significance in the Realm" and "on House Iselsi's death list" is almost but not quite a perfect circle and we're one of the handful of people outside the latter circle.
So then we are best off going out of the realm, specifically Prasad. Hmm. In year one Diamond Cut Perfection could have transported us to the capitol. Think between Ambraea's growth and his expansion of his court is enough to target Prasad instead?
Well, fortunately the Empress is still secretly holding House Iselsi's leash and isn't letting them just go after everyone they hate willy nilly, so it's fine, probably, since that's a situation that will last forever!
Well at least we have it for now. Gives us time to do important things like court Maia, upgrade Verdigris, give Amiti's soul pendant a nibble, contract snake Elementals for all five elements, Get a Rematch with S'thera, and Establish a reputation by visiting Prasad with Diamond Cut Perfection.
We'll see. Amiti does have a new storyline and who knows, maybe Ambraea ends up helping her with some ritual to expand her power she hands it to Ambraea for safe keeping and she suddenly finds she needs both hands for something and has to pop in her mouth for a second? Could happen. Besides, Ambraea finds dealing with Simendor Deiza a troubsome experience, and we are fine with thats. Don't see how the soul of a, admittedly cursed, cinnamon roll like Amiti would be less tolerable than Deiza's abrasive personality? Don't diss it till you've tried it.
Three years, one month before the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress
Year 03: Metal Honing Stone
The cold comes early this year. For all that winter hasn't officially started yet, an unseasonable snowstorm rolled in the night before, bringing with it the sort of knife-like wind that works its way through every draft in the school, moaning intermittently at the edge of your hearing whenever you're near an outside wall. Even nw that the storm has turned to a cold, driving rain, you find yourself grateful that you tolerate the elements better than most, particularly as you pass a first year Cynis girl bundled up under a heavy cloak. Every time you've seen her, she's looked more and more miserable.
But you all call the first years "sacrifices" for a reason, after all.
You walk through the halls of the Heptagram, lost in thought about the lecture you've just attended, idly stroking the scales between Verdigris's eyes. The snake is wound around the same arm that you've tucked a heavy tome under, somehow exuding a contentment that only you can parse from her serpentine body language.
Geomancy is not your specific area of focus, but it is undeniably an important subject to have at least a basic understanding of. This lecture had been a case study on the doom of the Tarpan Wastes, the cascading failure that had led to millenia old geomancy failing during the Realm's infancy, turning a swathe of the southern Blessed Isle's most fertile land into a near lifeless salt flat. The fact that no one can be certain as to the precise cause makes it all the more interesting.
You pass into the floor of the library tower that contains your destination, navigating the stacks deftly enough, even in your distracted state. This is your third year in this school, after all — you know the common areas well enough to get by. The towering shelves of tomes to either side are deeply familiar by now, along with the creak of floorboards underfoot, and the faint extra-sensory hum that the magical lights hanging overhead give off to your sorcerously-awakened senses. It's not hard to find the niche you took the book from.
You're just sliding the tome home when you become aware of a much more human sound — a startled gasp from the next aisle over. Mild curiosity getting the better of you, you can't help but take a route out that leads you past it.
The sight you take in stops you short.
In the years since you first met her, Simendor Deiza has only grown rangier. Her features lean toward a short of sharp-eyed, hollow-cheeked gauntness that's accentuated by short-cropped hair that still glitters with metallic crystal embedded in the short strands. When she grins at you — and she grins at nearly everyone — it always puts you in mind of someone hungry and disreputable standing on your doorstep. You can take in precious little of that now:
Deiza lounges on the bench of a reading table, one hand gripping the front of Mnemon Keric's uniform tunic. He's standing over her, his mouth forcefully bent down to meet hers, letting her kiss him with a sort of unresisting enthusiasm. It's like looking at a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf.
If the rabbit, for some reason, liked it.
Deiza is the one who notices you, catching your eye from over Keric's shoulder — it's unfortunately how you realise you've been staring. She pushes Keric back, letting her lips curve up into that infuriating smile. "Taking notes, Prasad?"
Realising that she's talking to someone, Keric shoots to his feet, whirling around to face you, hastily trying to adjust his clothes. Fascinatingly, the pale marble texture of his face darkens to a delicate rose tint as he takes you in. It's the only time you've seen his red hair this much of a mess. For once, he doesn't immediately know what to say.
"I have a name," you tell Deiza.
"I know," Deiza agrees. "Now, were you just going to stand there and watch, or—"
You turn on your heel and leave in a spirit of true disgust.
"I was helping her translate a word!" Keric calls after you.
You hear Deiza's laugh, even as you round the next corner. "What, with your—"
By that point, you're far enough away not to hear the rest. Mercifully.
Your friends, who you'd agreed to meet for a joint study session after the lecture, are situated in a study room a floor down, and on the far side of the tower. When you finally arrive, opening the door with a basic word, you find the four of them sitting around a table, going over one another's notes.
"Half of this is just you speculating on ways you could duplicate the failure with necromancy!" Sola complains, holding up Amiti's notebook. "And why is there a drawing of an angry dog in the middle of this? Hi, Ambraea." Sola is leaning back in her chair, hair style tousled by an unfelt breeze as ever. She has Storm's Eye with her, the daiklave sheathed and leaning against the table near at hand. You try not to look directly at the many-faceted ruby above its crossguard; it gets distracting fast, each facet of the gem containing more facets, infinitely compounding.
"Well, yes, I thought — hello Ambraea! — the idea was fairly fascinating!" Amiti replies. She's reading a book while she carries on the conversation. This doesn't surprise anyone at the table, by this point in your acquaintanceship. "Corrupting a great sorcerous working with a lesser necromantic one should be possible, if not easy. I think you'd want to start with by forming a—"
"The dog, though?" Sola reminds her.
Amiti blinks her large, pale eyes. "Oh. That's... I was just thinking about Idelle."
You take an unused seat at the table, getting your notes out of your bag as Verdigris slowly uncoils from your neck. You catch L'nessa's eye, and she gives you a wave, clearly amused by the conversation being carried on. Her hair isn't growing any easier to manage with age, if anything only increasing its tendency to shed brilliantly-coloured autumnal leaves. Still, her resemblance to a smaller version of her mother is only getting stronger.
Maia looks up from the notes she's been reviewing, and gives you a smile, one of her fingers twining through her hair, which has gotten just long enough to be slightly unmanageable lately — it's darkened from brown to an inky black, reminding you inexorably of deep water under a moonless night. She hasn't gained any height over the years, but with the last of the baby fat leaving her face, she's understatedly, painfully beautiful.
Or, you think so, anyway.
"—so she's been acting a little strange because of the necromancy, I think," says Amiti. Her free hand wraps and unwraps the chain of her pendant around her fingers, the surface soulsteel shifting bizarrely under the room's magical light. "I know she was only helping me at first because her parents are my father's hearthmate, but it's still very awkward."
You blink at Amiti, halfway through laying out your notebook. "Your father is sworn kin with Demon-Fang Anay?
"Oh, yes," Amiti says, without a great deal of interest. "I've met her twice. She really does wear it everywhere. A little scary, though."
"Did something hold you up, Ambraea?" Maia asks.
You pause, letting a faint grimace cross your face. "I walked in on Simendor Deiza with Mnemon Keric in the library." Walked in on them doing what, generally, should be obvious from your tone.
"Simendor and Keric?" Sola asks, at precisely the same time that L'nessa says: "Keric and Deiza?"
Maia is very rapidly turning red, her eyes very wide. Amiti, seeing where the conversation is headed, has become much more invested in her book. It's an incredibly long, dull-looking treatise on the formation of different varieties of ghost, you note.
"Yes," you say, voice dry. "They're both very recognisable."
"I suppose he would like being pushed around by overbearing women," L'nessa allows. Maia let's out an appalled sort of giggle at this characterisation of Keric's house.
"It was a little ghastly, honestly," you say.
"Oh, like you're one to complain about things like this," L'nessa says, giving you a sly sort of look.
"I'm not sure what you're talking about," you tell her, not rising to the bait.
"Probably you and Vahelo," Amiti says helpfully, glancing up from her book. She seems a little startled when everyone around the table immediately looks to her. "My cousin, Sesus Vahelo. They, uh... met. Over the summer!"
You sigh.
"Was I not supposed to say that?" Amiti asks, sounding a little alarmed. "Was that a secret?"
"No, Amiti, it wasn't a secret," you say, pinching the bridge of your nose. Sola's grin has now joined L'nessa's smirk. You don't see what Maia's expression is -- that would require looking at her. She's gone very quiet, though.
"And you weren't even going to mention this?" Sola asks, clearly finding this deeply funny.
"Sesus Vahelo is a charming young woman," you say, with perfect honesty, and admirable poise, "whose company I enjoyed during a salon." You ignore Sola's stifled laugh at the word 'enjoyed'. "A lady does not carry stories of such things."
At this, L'nessa gives a delicate sort of snort. "Please. I'd tell you all about the boys whose company I enjoyed over the summer, but I get the feeling that's not your area of interest."
"I can't really fault you for finding your own fun at a party," Sola admits, still grinning, "if you don't mind having it with a Sesus." She makes this sound like a profound moral failing on Vahelo's part. "No offence!" she adds, glancing at Amiti with a flash of guilt.
"Oh, none taken!" Amiti says, far too effusively. When L'nessa laughs out loud at this, she seems to sense her error. "I mean, I mean, you're very nice! And tall? But, well, it's not as though we're even in love or anything interesting like that. What would be the point?" She slides down a little further in her seat, as if trying to hide behind her book, self consciously popping her pendant into her mouth.
Fortunately, Sola finds this more amusing than anything. "I'm sure I don't know either," she says.
You steal a glance over to Maia, and are slightly startled to realise that Verdigris has crossed the table when you weren't looking and is currently coiled up next to her notes. She looks up from stroking the snake's nose to meet your gaze, before glancing away again — you doubt that the awkwardness has anything to do with your familiar.
"So... I'm really not sure if I understand this part about dragon lines changing their aspect," Maia says, valiantly speaking up.
Amiti pounces on the change of subject, lowering her book, and speaking as best she can around the pendant. She's getting better at it, which is its own kind of off-putting. "Oh! Well, it's simple, I think! Here, I made a diagram — Sola, can I see my notes again? Thank you! If you look at the natural tendencies of the Essence toward Fire and Air..."
Things settle back into the more expected pattern of study and discussion. You're still faintly bothered by Deiza's constant, unnecessary rudeness, but you do your best to put it out of your head; you've managed to go the entire year without an actual direct confrontation with her, so why should this year be any different?
Article:
You're wrong, of course — where are you when things with Simendor Deiza boil over?
Lol. This will be fun. We still haven't had any combat sorcery between actual people. Just a lot of familiar combat and some sword dueling. Let's change things up.
We haven't gotten anything resembling Ambraea properly pitting her magic against a fellow Sorceress/Sorcerer since the quest began. I agree that it's time that changed, and I just hope others will come around.
[X] A battlefield sorcery exercise
This seems like it would be interesting and could lead to magic combat. While the seminar is safer and more boring, and the binding is just straight up asking for trouble.
Clearly this is the reason why even Deiza has the tact to keep such dignified meeting outside of dorms, though honestly other groups probably have members fail at some point.
As for the Binding ritual? We had one go wrong first year, and faced the Mercury Ants year two. We have a chance to get some actual Sorceress on Sorceress combat 17 updates in. Let's take it.
It's still two or three students to a room, so they can at least keep an eye on each other. The arrangements shift around a lot with kids dropping out (or dying, less commonly), but Ambraea and her roommates have all stuck it out.
Yes, it would be annoying for L'nessa if these two were making eyes at each other the whole time, but honestly the increasing romantic tension is probably already annoying enough for her.
