Annalise – Phoenix Wing Guild Hall
Unfortunately, after her plea, Annalise's sycophantic mood evaporated into rigid, unflappable seriousness. She greeted Ariel's question with a look totally devoid of emotion, expression, or intelligence. In slow, lethargic words, ones dry as the Kalahari heat for lack of tone, she sounded out,
“What...shard...of...glass?” At that moment, the scabbard in her hand cracked, and two pieces of its surface broke off and transformed into butterflies. The little, ebony-black insects flitted around her head, and Annalise watched them with empty green eyes, her face a blank canvas. The butterflies flew for only a few moments before reuniting with the rest of the scabbard, and Annalise sank into the nearest empty table.
A drop of salty water leaked from the corner of her eye. Her eyes stared off into the distance, focused on nothing, but it was obvious her mood had shifted again.
“...Thank you for asking to do this,” she whispered, a trace of her true self breaking through.
“It's so hard to focus. Whenever I try...it really hurts. I hope you'll put up with me long enough to find out how to cure me.”A look of pain crossed her face, leaving a happy smile in its wake.
“Hello! So what is your name?”Fleo Plector – Phoenix Wing Guild Hall
Fleo smiled apologetically.
“Sorry! If it's any consolation, I think you had the upper hand. Your arrows were coming so fast, I was forced to fight very defensively. At least you didn't wreck anything!” It was pretty obvious, however, that Fleo didn't feel too badly about her magical mishap. She looked at the remains of Trinity's breakfast with a sort of longing.
“That meal looked excellent, I wish I could afford to eat like that. If today meal's not a special occasion, you must exercise almost daily to keep in such good shape.”After watching Annalise's actions for a moment, though too far to hear her moment of lucidity, the dusty woman nodded her assent to the minstrel's suggestion.
“Yeah, I'd like to help her if possible. I didn't see her flier, so I don't know the job's specifics, but anything helps, you know?” She got up, straightened her cap, and made her way to Ariel, expecting Trinity to follow her. Not wanting to interrupt, she waited for their own conversation to end.
Nestled in the bed thanks to Ayame, Nero dreamed a strange dream. Though not happy, it was by no means a nightmare. Nero sat, in a schoolboy's uniform at a desk in a classroom. Looking around, he could see to his relief that these walls did not belong to Strychnine; that dark Academy had hosted few windows, and through what few of them there were lay only views of twisted trees. The grim forest surrounding that old boarding school of terror had been a constant reminder of Nero's entrapment, for however horrible the teachers and other kids were, a chance of survival within the walls beat the certain death that awaited him in those woods. At least, until the fateful day...but that mattered not, for Nero sat not in one of Strychnine's 'classrooms'.
Instead, he sat in a chamber of tile floor and brick wall. Thirty other desks occupied the room with them, and several were tenanted, though all tenants were sound asleep. Nearest to Nero was a young girl he recognized in Ayame, though she wore different clothes—ones that he hadn't given to her. There were others he almost immediately identified, including Trinity from Phoenix Wing, and Shujin and Prince from Dragon Fang. Beyond them, also asleep at desks, were Ginger and Free. After that, the faces got more and more obscure, and Nero didn't want to get up to look for fear of waking them up, so instead he looked at the walls. They were plastered with stickers and signs in a language he did not understand. Frustrated now, and growing bored, Nero tiptoed his way to the windows and was shocked to see every person asleep in the room outside, romping on a sunlit hill. Absolute joy and ease, on their faces and in the air, and sealed away from Nero by a wall of glass. He pressed his hands against the surface, but so icy-cold was the crystal surface that he gasped and drew back. He knew he wanted nothing better than to go out and join with them, to fit in and be normal, but he knew that he could never get through that glass.
Screaming suddenly in anger, Nero pounded on the glass, and the image changed. Nero sucked in his breath, terrified at the monster he now saw. It was navy-skinned, with wide, dead-white eyes, a third, vertical eye on its forehead, long, pointed ears, and spindly fingers. It, however, looked just as surprised as Nero, and it didn't take a genius to figure out why.
“Well, this must be a dream,” the genie said, looking at what he guessed was his reflection.
“Real life isn't this ironic. No wonder I'm stuck in here. Let's see, now that I've figured out that this is a dream, I ought to be able to control it.”Unfortunately, he couldn't. In his wrath he loosed incredible power on the sleeping bodies in the classroom, loosing every Curse Law he knew and some he didn't, for after all, there were no consequences in a dream.
-=-=-
Some time later, Nero awoke. His neck hurt incredibly when he tried to move. He remembered dreaming, but couldn't for the life of him remember anything about it. Sitting up, he found himself in bed. After a puzzled moment, he decided that Ayame must have stumbled in on him, found him unconscious, and either gotten someone else to help her -which was unlikely- or done something on her own to make him more comfortable.
“Aw, what a sweet kid.”
