Final Outcome:
Magic
- Dimensional Science
- Countermagic
- Enchanting
- Spiritual
Social
- The TA
- Lusca
- Ruby
- Henry
Special
- Listen
- Get a sense of things in the college after the Archmage's 'lesson.'
- Find out what's going on outside the college.
- Join a Club (Interdimensional Creatures Club)
Perhaps it was somewhat lazy of you, but the first thing you did after dropping Lusca and Ruby off at their rooms was fall asleep in your bed for about ten hours. Normally you handle all nighters well, but it appears being on edge for hours waiting for the Archmage's next trick only for it to never come has messed with your normally unflappable sleep schedule. This irritates you, because waking up after noon is positively slovenly, and it means you will have to ensure you go to sleep early today in order to maintain good sleeping habits.
With a somewhat shameful yawn, you head to the TA's room. You want to talk to her about the Archmage's lesson and hopefully get some idea of what's going on outside the college. The walk there is uneventful. Most of the other students are still sleeping you would guess, and eyeing the completely undamaged walls and floors, you assume that the Archmage or someone else fixed the college up while you slept. A glance out a window shows you the city of Diadem proper. It's mostly unchanged at a glance, but you do see a worrying number of columns of smoke in the distance...
Regardless, you soon enough reach the TA's door and knock, stifling another yawn as you do so. After a long pause and just before you try knocking again, the door opens, revealing the TA once more in her pink pajamas. She doesn't look as utterly exhausted as she did the last time you saw her, but she still looks about as tired as you feel- so very.
"Oh, Saphira. Good afternoon."
You nod back at her, unfortunately unable to reply with words as you stifle yet another yawn.
"Sorry," you apologize, "I'm still tired after the Archmage's test."
The TA seems to accept this response and gestures tiredly with one hand for you to come into her room.
"So, I wanted to ask what yesterday was about. Why the crazy test from the Archmage?"
The TA considers for a moment before responding.
"I suppose there's no harm in telling you. The faculty has been drafted by the city council to help deal with the current rebel problem. Wrath apparently has some grand plan to end them in one fell swoop. The Archmage didn't want to just give the students a week off for nothing, so he came up with that test."
You absorb that for a moment. You supposed it fit with what you knew of the Archmage. The thing it really made you wonder about though was...
"So, what's happening with the revolution then? It must be bad if the city council called on the faculty of the college like that, right?"
The TA just shakes her head.
"We both know better than that. This is the city council we're talking about."
To that statement, you can only silently agree. Before you can ask about anything else though, the TA interrupts your train of thought.
"I'm afraid that I won't have any time to tutor you for the rest of the week. I need to make sure none of Dishevel's experiments go awry while he is gone. Leaving them unattended would be a very bad idea." She pauses, before continuing before you can get another word in edgewise. "Although... If you were to help me with that, I could no doubt teach you something along the way. And if you want to do any more learning while normal classes are cancelled, there's a club I can definitely recommend to you."
You eagerly agree.
---
...You don't regret agreeing to help with TA with Dishevel Vino's experiments while he was gone, but you do wish you had asked her anything at all about what they entailed beforehand. On paper, they were almost to a one incredibly dull and highly theoretical applications of niche edge cases and sharp points where the basic (or advanced as the case might be) principles of dimensional science tore sharply into what were commonly understood to be physical laws. In practice, it involved a lot of mind bendingly twisted and folded space that hurt to even glance at, let alone try to understand, and in no less than three cases, terrifying open portals to the far reaches of intradimensional space that seemed to devour your attention as what felt like only a moment's glance could turn into half an hour if you weren't careful.
Still, you had no end of interest for the topic, and you were always glad to return to his lab.
---
You knock on Lusca's door. It opens with such swiftness that you expect to find her about to walk into you on her way out of the room, but instead she has her back to you on the other side of the room. You catch a glimpse of a tendril of water rapidly retreating from the door and into one of several glass vases in the corners of her room as you step inside and give a casual greeting. She responds with a murmur you don't quite catch, but otherwise gives no reaction and continues writing in what appears to be some kind of notebook or diary. You wait a minute, but Lusca doesn't tell you to leave or finish up whatever she's doing. After another minute, you sit down on her bed and look up at her ceiling, yawning as quietly as possible as you do. Her bed was very comfortable.
You open your eyes with a start and glance around quickly in panic. You drifted off, you're not sure how long. Lusca was still writing and didn't seem to have noticed, so hopefully not too long. You internally cursed the Archmage's stupid test messing with your sleep schedule before quickly coming up with something to talk about before you drifted off again.
"So. Your magic was pretty impressive during the test." You say, hoping for a reply at a greater volume than a whisper.
"Was it?" She replies concisely, but you'll take what you can get where she's concerned.
"Definitely. Especially whatever you did that let you see through the Archmage's tricks. Even after knowing what was happening I still had to spend a while looking to find it." She tilts her head at your reply, still not looking at you, eyes firmly fixed on her journal, teeth chewing the end of her quill for a moment.
"Not a spell. I see the truth." She says.
Huh. Well, you did suspect there was something magical about her when you considered the blue hair, but now you were left wracking you brain and coming up empty on what could see through... Not even illusions. The corridors were actually physically changed. She just saw what was really there somehow. You wonder if it would be rude to ask?
"Yes."
"Huh?" You're pulled away from your reverie as she answers the unspoken question.
"It would be rude to ask."
You narrow you eyes at her back and tilt your own head in speculation, then shake it. You doubt she would give you a straight answer after just saying that it would be rude to ask. After a pause, you ask after her journal, and she answers in her characteristic laconic way. Some amount of prying more words out of her later, you learn that it's a catalog of her opinion on various foods. Apparently she was an avid taste tester. Good to know if you wanted to get more on her good side later. Eventually, you excuse yourself and she gives a one word dismissal as she continues writing.
---
You and Ruby have been meeting up to talk and practice countermagic as usual for the last couple days. Really, despite the lack of classes, everything seems to have faded back to a sort of normality. One that is unfortunately shattered after a brief conversation with Henry when he coincidentally bumps into you and her on your way to the library one morning. Normally you have your study sessions in one of your rooms, but you haven't been able to get a proper night's sleep ever since the Archmage's test threw your sleep schedule out of wack and the soft beds kept making you doze off.
Luckily Ruby wasn't in much of a mood to get in a fight, and Henry carried on fairly quickly. Before he left though, he made you aware that twelve of your fellow first years had 'failed' the test. You'll be honest, it's something that you had avoided thinking about, and even now it's something that you want to look away from. Despite that... The look in Henry's eyes and on his face as he tells you and Ruby this sticks with you. More than that number, the determination on his face is burned into your memory. You don't know what it is he's going to do or what he thinks he's going to accomplish by standing up to the Archmage, but you know that he's going to do something. And that you definitely want to be as far away from it as possible.
Right?
---
On Saturday, you make it a point to find time to attend the weekly meeting of the club that the TA had recommended to you. Interdimensional creatures were definitely a topic worth studying, especially after getting a look at some of Dishevel's research notes. There was some very scary and very cool stuff out there, and a club dedicated to it did sound like something you would enjoy. And hopefully learn something from.
When you enter the room the club used for it's normal activities, located in the basement of the college, the second thing that strikes you is how the metal structures crackling with barely contained energy remind you of crude copies of Dishevel Vino's own research. The first thing that strikes you is a surprisingly thick pamphlet thrown at your face that you only just manage to intercept and catch. A chorus of cheerful voices calls after you as an invisible force pushes you out of the room and slams the door shut in front of you.
"Read that and come back next week!"
...Yes. Definitely an interesting club. Still, you think as you give the pamphlet on club goals, safety, and theory a quick skim, this looked interesting and probably would occupy you until next week assuming classes started up again.
---
On Monday, you wake up at a painful crack of dawn to an announcement from the Archmage that classes were returning to their normal schedule. The first chance you get, after taking an ice cold shower to try and wake up as much as possible you head to the TA's room to ask her what that meant for what was happening outside of Diadem. You weren't disappointed. In one cunning masterstroke from Wrath, almost all of the revolutionaries had been traced back to their hidey holes and caught. The information the TA had was a bit fuzzy on the details, but whatever happened, it had been both sudden and very, very thorough.
And then... All of a sudden things were back to normal. You attended class (still hampered by your seeming inability to get a proper night's sleep), everyone else did too (save for a few unfortunate faces that were now absent...). You talked with... You supposed friends now that you semi-regularly stopped by Lusca's room and occasionally joined her for meals with Ruby. For someone so concerned with the taste of food, she was a surprisingly messy eater, always trying to swallow everything in one bite even when it was clearly too large. You read through the club pamphlet, and it was very interesting. The gates to and from the college were open once more. You had looked over the city from one of the college's towers and things seemed to be mostly repaired.
So why, then, did everything feel like it was teetering on a knife's edge even more than it had before? Henry and that fire in his eyes you couldn't forget, the sudden revolution, the dead classmates, your constant weariness... It all left you uneasy. As much as you would like it to be so, you feel in your bones that something else was coming. Something much worse than a short lived and ill-conceived revolution.
The mid semester enchanting project for dimensional science is coming up. Who do you partner with? (Choose any number. Note that more group members means higher expectations and that personality clashes may cause problems.)
[] Ruby
[] Lusca
[] Henry and a friend of his (The tagalong is mandatory)
[] Adam
+30 Dimensional Science
+20 Countermagic
+15 Enchanting
+10 Spiritual
---
She drifted, in that liminal state of tiredness where eyes open or closed a headache built. Caught between the peace of rest and the necessity of wakefulness, unable to truly find either. She dug for motivation, the will to call on her power and return her senses to their proper, keen-edged state. It eluded her. The growing headache was painful, but there was something about it, about that place between clarity and dreams that called to her. Shades of grey beckoned like a cozy fire. She wanted to just linger for a while. Loiter. Laze. And yet...
She Was.
The World Anew returned to her vigilance, ever waiting for a command- an instruction to use her power to sear the wicked and smite evil. She was never one to care about long periods of inaction, or to presume to know the minds of the Gods, but she knew in her bones that a decision would soon be reached and she would be called to action once more. Soon. Very soon now.
Further Intervention Approved. Target Designated.
[] Wrath, Fifth Lord of the Abyss (Warning: Extreme Fluctuations in Fate associated with target)
[] Viola (Warning: Fragment of The Divine Sensed)
[] Morgan Blackreach
[] Astrea (Warning: Total Divination Failure. No Further Information)
[] The Black Dragon of Wealth (Warning: Extreme Flight Risk)
[] The Archmage (Warning: Existential Threat, Engage with Extreme Caution)
Front page updated with a couple newly available spells.
