A N T O N L I N D Q U I S T
The Narrows, Kilbride, Eden District, 10:30 am
The history of the Draoi is one written in blood. It is the blood of the Tree of Life and Death, drunk by the first of our order. It is the blood of our ancestors, who were slaughtered and bled like pigs to feed the horrid rune-magic of the Venari. It is the blood of the sacrificial lambs, those unfortunate few of us who were deemed worthy only to be sacrificed to produce a new, diA heavy knocking rattles the door in its frame, shocking Anton Lindquist out of his scholarly stupor. He starts, accidentally dragging his pen in a line over what he had already written. He growls, pushing his dark hair out of his eyes as the knocking continues. Interrupted yet again.
"It's open, Jerry," he says, pushing himself away from his small desk. His room in the small apartment in the area of Crescent City affectionately referred to as the Narrows is compact and filled with what little Anton could carry with him during his escape from the family estate a month ago. Mostly books, many of them merely recreations of ancient tomes, but a few rare and dusty originals. The ones he couldn't bear to leave without.
The door opens, with some difficulty. The entire apartment seems to have been built on a slant, and the doors tend to stick in the frame, requiring more force than should be necessary. Jerry Griffith, a short, round man with dark curls on his head and a bad goatee around his mouth, stomps into the room and drops a leatherbound book on Anton's desk.
"Dude, I've told you. Stop. Leaving. Your books. Everywhere. Around. My apartment," he says.
"I'll remind you that, since I am paying rent, that makes it our apartment," Anton replies, turning his attention to the book that Jerry had rudely returned to him.
"And I'll ask you to please treat my things with more care.""Then stop fuckin' leavin' 'em everywhere!" Jerry says, gesturing widely with his hands.
"How the fuck'm I supposed to make quote if I've gotta move your shit to get to my shit?""Quota.""Huh?""You mean quota, not quote.""What the fuck ever. Just quit leaving your stupid books in the common room, a'right?""I find it funny that you're getting upset at me for forgetting a book or two out there every week, when your 'weed farm' has dominated the room for the past month.""That's my livehood you're talking about. It'd be on the roof if it wasn't for this fuckin' rain." He gestures at the window. After so long spent in Crescent City's constant downpour, the sound of rain had become background noise to Anton, but it comes rushing back to meet him as soon as Jerry pointed it out. It's so distracting that he doesn't even notice Jerry's faulty vocabulary.
"'s bad for business, I'm tellin' ya." Jerry sniffs, disapprovingly.
"I'm certain it is," Anton agrees, if just to get Jerry to stop talking.
"The fact that you're still here suggests you have something else to talk to me about.""Now that you mention it, yeah. Mind stepping out for a little while? Manda's coming over, and not to brag or nothin', but it might be getting a bit noisy." He pushes his pelvis forward as punctuation.
Anton successfully fights off the urge to roll his eyes and make some quip about stepping outside for a five-minute smoke break.
"Fine, fine. I was planning on going for a walk anyway." He stands up, towering over Jerry even with his hunched-over posture.
"'Preciate it, brother. Mind picking me up some Camels while you're out?" Jerry asks, as Anton pulls on his dark overcoat and collects his cane and umbrella.
"Not until you pay me for the last pack," Anton says, ushering Jerry out of his room on his way out. He roughly pulls the door shut, needing two attempts before the door fits properly, and edges around his roommate's leafy green weed farm to get to the front door.
"Give Amanda my best."He's gone before he can catch Jerry's grunted response. He looks up and down the stairwell to ensure that nobody else is coming, and switches his grip on his cane from the dark ebony wood to the ornate, worn gold head. The circuit is completed, and he feels the
tingle of the Vis running through him. He sighs at the familiar, reassuring feeling. He was always aware of the Vis, but like the unending rain, it was like background noise, something that he knew was there just on the edge of his awareness. But with the conductive metal in his hand, it was that much harder to ignore, and it flowed through him and into the cane, buzzing in what he could only think of as its desire to be released.
Anton formed the mental image of what he wanted the Vis to do, and let it flow from his core, down his arm, into the cane, and then
out. If anyone had been watching, they would have seen Anton simply vanish from the stairwell without any fanfare. No sound, no flash of light. He's simply gone.
A paltry fraction of a second later, Anton reappears in a dimly-lit storage compartment five blocks away from the apartment. He sets his umbrella down in the corner; he didn't necessarily need to bring it, but it was necessary to continue the lie that he had gone on a walk. Teleportation was far, far more efficient, but it was also as far from the norm as it was possible to be.
Anton shrugs off his coat and lays it on the workbench. Materials cover the wall behind it, mostly sheets and loops of copper. With his limited budget, it's all that Anton can afford at the moment, but not all that he has. He pulls at one of the sleeves of his coat, and fingers the three gold buttons at the cuff. It's taken a few weeks of practice with the copper to get to this point, but he thinks it's finally time to do something a bit
larger.
With a small pair of scissors, he cuts the first of the gold buttons off the sleeve - he can sew it back on later - and begins to focus. He imagines a shield, and
presses the mental picture into the malleable metal. The Vis begins to flow out of the room around him, through Anton, and into the button, soaking it with the energy. Even as the enchantment is slowly applied, Anton's mind is working, dictating the writing that Jerry had so rudely interrupted.
The history of the Draoi...
