Scoffing, you wave dismissively. "Please, this coat could belong to anybody."
"I never said it was the coat that was stolen." Karin sneers in return.
Mimicking her expression, you reply, "And I am the anybody that it belongs to now. Honestly, you act as though petty theft is of any importance when in reality your daughter and I have committed much more heinous acts in the last few months." You grin maliciously at the woman as Louise pales. "Why, just the other day, the two of us decimated a city by dropping an airship upon the castle. Before that, we collapsed a mine and released an otherworldly monstrosity on the populace... I assure you, my raiding of your wardrobe should be the least of your concerns."
The woman looks appalled, but other than giving her daughter a sideways glance, merely tightens her grip on her weapon. "What kind of monster are you?" She asks through gritted teeth.
"Me? A monster?" You ask with feigned innocence. Meeting your apprentice's eye, you wonder aloud, "Should I mention our trip to Londinium, you think?"
Karin takes a faltering step backward in surprise for some reason. With the woman off balance, you open your mouth to begin explaining the girl's phenomenal progress in her studies of real magic, only for the duchess Vallière to blur across the room and bury her sword up to the hilt in your throat. Louise screams mingles with the singing of your sword as you fall backward and swipe at your foe. With speed that surprises even you, your blade narrowly manages to catch the speeding woman across the stomach, her blade still jammed in your neck as she is forced to leave it or be disemboweled. With a gurgling sound, you struggle for breath as a shadow falls over your body and Karin flees unnatural swiftness, her daughter still screaming in her arms.
"Cynric!" Quelana shouts as she kneels next to you and unsheathes the rapier from you trachea, allowing you to cast a strong healing spell to undo the damage, though it doesn't leave you with much magicka... a situation all too familiar to you.
Removing yourself from the immortal's grasp as she gapes at your blood-soaked and uninjured self, you brush yourself off and cough to clear your throat of blood. "It would seem I underestimated that woman." You admit in an admirable display of humility.
"You realize that she impaled you, yes? With naught but a flesh-wound in return." The witch appears to be unimpressed, though the fact that her eyes remain fixed on your non-existent wound would suggest otherwise.
Waving off her irrational argument, you stand to remove your coat and undershirt so that you can wring out as much blood as you possible before it hardens. "The dangers of dealing with the unknown." You refute. "All previous evidence suggested that the magic of Louise's homeland required both a wand and incantation... It would appear that I have been misinformed, nothing more. Now, I believe we should turn our attention to more pressing matters."
Quelana remains silent, staring at you with a strange expression for far longer than you are comfortable with. Doing your best to ignore her unnerving gaze, you ponder your current issues. Not only are you all but out of magicka, your apprentice has been abducted and there is a mutated witch of unknown power in the other room. You doubt the girl will remember her scroll of Recall before crossing the portal to her homeland and the spell is not intended for crossing between the realms of Oblivion, thus putting her out of your reach for the moment.
Sighing at Karin's foolishness, you pull your clothing back on and head toward the seemingly peaceful spider-witch, the sound of Quelana's footsteps following you after several moments.
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Louise wrapped her arms around her legs as she sat in the corner of her room. Her freshly emptied room, all her belongings removed and replaced with the bare minimum provided for servants. It really wasn't much of a punishment to the girl after her recent travels.
Master Cynric didn't even carry a bedroll with him. She thought, her lips twitching in amusement at the thought of how she would have reacted only a few months ago. Sighing, she shook her head in disappointment. It had been six days since she's returned home and been confined to her room, the servants forbidden from speaking to her and nothing but onion soup and bread for her meals. While not ideal, her current punishment was more confusing than anything.
Louise knew her mother was upset by what she had done with her teacher, but neither her current situation nor her mother's angry lectures made much sense. So the two of them destroyed several major cities, wasn't that a good thing? Wasn't she always taught that to disobey the crown was to forfeit your life? It wasn't as if they hadn't deserved to die.
"You'd think she would be proud of me for once." Louise whispered to herself. Of course not, you're still worthless to her, you always will be.
It was becoming increasingly apparent to the youngest Vallière that very few of those around her had her best interest at heart. Her parents had yet to do more than scold and reprimand her during their infrequent visits, her peers had never cared to begin with, and Eleanore hadn't even bothered to come by. The only reason she'd known that her eldest sister had been to the estate was due to the view from her window.
At least Cattleya can be trusted.
Over the last couple nights, Cattleya had managed to somehow sneak into her room and deliver an impressive amount of alchemy ingredients. Ingredients that were wrapped up in a bed-sheet between the two mattresses, a chunk of the mysterious fluffy material removed and burnt with magic to hide the bulge. It was through her sister that Louise had learned she'd been away for several months, time having moved much quicker in Halkeginia than wherever her master was at the moment... She didn't dare doubt that he survived, not again.
"Restoration magic can fix a little hole... probably."
Sighing once more, she stood up and watched the soldiers as they attempted to smash apart the pillars of her master's gate. Watching the ignorant fools struggle against the combined craftsmanship of two Vallière sisters and her master was the most entertainment she had recently, the rest of her isolation spent refining her skills. Mother had confiscated her wand-sword, though not without many painful shocks from the weapon, but she couldn't take away her magic.
While not abandoning her practice with the rest of her repertoire, she had been putting the majority of her focus toward Illusion and Shock magic. She had run out of mice to explode with her attempts at causing blindness via illusion, but she felt she was close to a successful casting. Hours of attempting the spell with as little magicka as possible had allowed Louise to create a small arc between her hands without hurting herself, filling her with hope that she would one day be capable of wielding the power of a fully functioning Lightning Bolt spell. One way or another, she would need both in the coming days if she was to make her escape.
With a smirk, she watched as one of the conscripts was hit in the face by a rebounding sledgehammer. Flexing her not insignificant power, she watched as the wounded man looked around in alarm before his head exploded. "So close that time." The pinkette muttered, sinking back down below the windowsill to avoid notice. "A few more days."
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"Is she speaking? Because I cannot hear any words." You announce, leaning against the wall and ignoring the disgusting man on the floor.
Quelana gives you the same treatment as she tentatively grasps the sharpened talons that pass for fingers on the stark arachnid-woman. You can't understand a word she says, but her gibberish gives way to sobbing after the pale lady moves her lips once more. Soon enough you are witness to the third most disturbing hug you've even seen, twitching spider legs and emaciated limbs struggling in Quelana's embrace as the smell of sewage and disease drifts through the air.
"So... leave this one alive?" You ask indifferently.
"Y-yes, I would very much prefer that." The witch says, releasing her hold on her sister. Despair written on her face, she looks at you. "Cynric... This is my sister Queleah... She... I believe the one above was Quelaag... We made a terrible mistake."
Status: Healthy
Magicka: (25/650)
Choose 1:
[] Listen to her problems.
[] Ignore her, you have more important things to worry about-
[] Such as recovering your apprentice.
[] there are still more of her family members to kill!
[] Point out that you made no mistake, you did as requested.
[] Write in.
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A/N: Still have a bunch of stuff going on, but I typed a thing for you guys.
