Traitor

Progressive Arcanum

Elizabeth woke up early. Very likely a lot earlier than most other students, which didn't really prevent her from making a hell of a lot of noise, rummaging through her belongings to find her 'uniform'.

Her room was about as messy as you'd expect from a free spirit like her. It surely wasn't the smallest room in the dormitory by any means, but the girl managed to make it look pretty damn cramped. There was a large working desk with various pieces of metal in various shapes spread across that virtually ate one fourth of the entire room. Lizz' bed wasn't much more than a fair sized mattress obscured by an awfully old looking but surprisingly comfortable couch with panoramic view on said work desk. The actual desk-desk section was horribly small and only offered very few books and a bunch of unorganized sketches and notes. Both of which had scorch marks here and there. The only piece of furniture that didn't look like it was older than Lizz herself was the wardrobe, which contrary to peoples expectations was not the 'avalanche' type, but reasonably uncluttered. And all of that was covered in a fine layer of good old fashioned junk - rags burned as fresh ones, undefinable tools probably used for various tasks at the desk, ripped out book pages of unknowable origin, broken down pieces of armor, a few mostly empty bottles here and there, glass splinters, a variety of bandages and 'first aid equipment', two pairs of clunky leather boots. However, out of all the people in the entire academy, less than a handful knew what the inside of Miss Seyes room looked like, the few exceptions being people who forcefully had to move the pink haired girl into enforced room arrest - they were afraid she could damage or destroy the official holding cells, so it was decided to lock her up somewhere were she'd not cause too much destruction. Apart from that, people keep away from the room as it was considered somewhat like a lions den...and rightfully so. Needless to say, her door has one or two magic seals that can be used to lock it up, and Elizabeth does not have 'the key' for those.

After a decidedly too long period of causing a ruckus including loud and vulgar curses only adept users of sound dampening magic could endure at this time of the day, Elizabeth Seyes the guard stepped onto the corridor. Of course, she had volunteered for a shift at the ceremony, not only because that'd give her a chance to receive some respectful (or fearful) attention, it also earned her a handful of pay and made the horribly dull ceremony more bearable. Her working attire differed from the regular guard only in two points: For one, she was wearing a sleeveless belted leather vest, that really was more belts than vest if you looked at it technically. The custom garment fulfilled two duties, protecting her torso from blows and superficial damage, and putting emphasis on her 'weaponry'. Which was point two. Where other guards had a polearm, halberd or some such, Lizz had two fists, wrapped in fingerless leather gloves that protected ones knuckles in the case of the unintentional - or intentional? - wall punch. This outfit also revealed both of her brawny arms, the left one covered in a tattoo portraying cogwheel shapes, wandering from her wrist all the way up to her shoulder and resurfacing from the vest around the right side of her neck, the other one decorated with three impressive scars, all of which were referring to training accidents. This was no coincident, the girl actually protects the - in her eyes - more valuable skin on her left arm with her right one when shit hits the fan and the fan blades come flying. While the academy guard didn't exactly approve of her appearance, they were secretly relieved because fists were rather low on the lethality-scale, even 'in the hands' of a choleric thug.

Her initially grumpy mood - due to not finding those cursed gloves - was quickly replaced with a self-satisfied and slightly mean smile. She felt superior wandering the academy in this set of clothes. Just outside the dormitory, a group of early-bird second-year boys recognized the face and attire, and promptly made a run for it. It was like sweet honey dripping onto her already swollen ego, which now started to wallow in it. If only, if only someone'd provoke a quarrel at the ceremony...that'd truly make her day.

Magik Ther Was

Aww come on, don't say you didn't see this coming. The only way it could possibly have been more obvious is if it was in the thread title, really.

Progressive Arcanum

"A student with good academics, reputation, and speaking skills to stand-in for the student representative."

That's totally Lizz.

-smart
-popular
-witty
-fashion sense
-reliable
-"If I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you."

Progressive Arcanum

Apokalipse said
Wow, you guys talk so much I skimmed most of this and so I have like no idea what anybody is talking about.

In a nutshell:

Dreamweavers (A Story of Sleeping Gods)

Glad you didn't give up on that idea of yours Jay. I'd be interested as well but can't promise being able to partake as of yet.

Progressive Arcanum

Zombehs said
“The price is already set, and no, I’m not taking higher bids. Now, either walk or give the sword back so I can. I do have someone waiting.”

Elizabeth couldn't avoid laughing out loud at this notion. Not the nicest thing to do in this situation, no matter how you put it.

"No worries, I'm not after this thing. 's a little too delicate for me anyway."

Yes, a longsword too 'delicate'. Not an awful lot of people could say this without the slightest trace of irony, and while a bit of mockery swung with her voice, the girl was absolutely honest and dead serious about it. However, the fact that Veili had indeed crafted the sword himself was great news for her. Inofficially she was looking for a skilled weaponsmith for quite some time now, but never found anyone who could measure up to her standards or fit the psychological profile this redhead served her on a silver plate. She needed someone to craft an almost suicidal thing for her, and he would do just that, she was certain of it now. Not that Elizabeth actually understood the slightest thing about psychology. She handed him the sword in the same way he held it out to her moments ago, but still intended to follow him, regardless of his consent about that.

"I need you to forge something for me, blacksmith boy. Not today, but soon. Something bigger than the toothpick here."

Her ambiguous, wide grin didn't quite offer insight just how revolutionary or illegal this 'something' would be, but it promised to be remarkable at least.

Progressive Arcanum

Just arrived home, let me settle down and eat, then I'll post & make sure not to drag things out any longer than necessary. That of course means I'm fine with the skip.

Magik Ther Was

Nia Winters woke up on a wide, wonderful meadow. As far as her eyes could reach, there was only nature. It felt almost alien for her, being the only object in the entire scenery that seemed decidedly out of place. She slowly got up from the soft, grassy ground where she must have fallen asleep, looking around sleepily. The girl immediately realized where she was, she had been here many times before. Behind her grandparents old farm, there were endless grassy fields and light vegetation, barely worth being called forests. Still a little disoriented, she stood up, brushing off some grass that sticked to her back from lying down for so long. She didn't quite remember if she lied down to take a nap in the first place, or if she fell asleep by accident while indulging in the nostalgia of this place and the beauty of untouched nature. This was by no means unusual for the girl, being a little drowsy after waking up. Being a commited student had taken its toll on her and messed up her sleeping schedule more than she enjoyed, which in turn made these episodes more frequent as of late. Convinced that the drowsyness would dissipate, she took a few uneasy, bare-feet steps and enjoyed the feeling of grass that had grown naturally for decades. The slightest breath of wind gently played with her almost waist-long hair. She closed her eyes again, savoring the moment before she had to return to the farm.

And then the wind stopped. The birds chirping moved into the distance. The cicadas ended their quiet concert. The entire meadow fell into perfect silence. Nia opened her eyes again, confused. She looked at the cloudless sky, no feathers to be seen. She stared at the motionless trees, no leaf moving in the slightest. The quiet was overwhelming, and herself clearing her throat felt almost deafening against the vast absence of sound, so much that it scared her a little. Confusion turned into concern. Concern turned into worry.
And then she felt it. Felt something moving, faint at first but definite and real. It was in the trees. It was in the grass, in the earth, in the small streamlet to her right. It was inside herself and in the air. Like pressure shifting. Everything was bracing for something, like the human body braces before a certain, inevitable impact. Nia covered her ears, as if to protect them from an impending sound that'd break the veil of silence.

"...Miss Winters!"

Nia woke with a start when the nice old lady from behind the library desk touched her shoulder, calling her name. Her heart was racing and she flinched away from the woman, again disoriented and perplexed. The book she had rested her arms and head on slipped off the table during this motion, producing a loud thud as it hit the wooden floor.

"You need to get some sleep, dear. In a bed, not on top of your work."

The lady offered her an empathetic smile, since she knew how much time the girl had spent in here over the course of the last weeks. More time than at home.

"We're about to close." She added. "I'm sorry to wake you like this. Take your time packing your stuff... shouldn't finals be over by now anyway?"

Nia packed her notes in a hurry, avoiding the last question with a muttered apology, escaping eye contact. The woman didn't press the matter. She felt for the exhausted girl but knew there wasn't much she could do. "Just leave the books, I'll take care of it."

She nodded thankfully, grabbed her one-strap backpack and was about to dart off, as the librarian called for her again. "You forgot a note." Nia stopped in her tracks, thinking very hard for a second before turning around again. "Must be from someone else..." she started, as she was certain not to have removed anything from the notepad in her backpack. "Are you sure? Looks like your handwriting to me." The old lady held a piece of paper in front of Nia that definitely was written by her. Surprise made her forget about the question where the woman had learned to distinguish her handwriting, but the urge to leave was greater than her curiosity, and so she took the note from the smiling old librarian. After thanking her briefly, she finally made her exit, out on the nightly streets of NYC. She quickly forgot about the note stowed away into the left pocket of her jacket. Until two streetcars and a cup of cheap noodles later. In the safety of her tiny, cramped apartment, Nia remembered the note and finally sat down to actually look at it. There wasn't much written on the paper, just a date, a time and a location, but clearly she wrote this. Coincidentally, it happened to be Central Park, 9p.m. tomorrow. She tried to remember why she wrote that down for the entirety of half a minute, when realization hit her that she couldn't even recall what book she fell asleep on. Nia decided that the old lady was right - she had to sleep. Barely managed to brush her teeth before passing out half dressed on top of her bed.

Thankfully, the nightmare from the her unvoluntary nap didn't return. After sleeping half the day away, that note bugged Nia for several hours. The option to return to the library again and ask what book she had borrowed last night didn't seem very attractive, it was awkward enough to get caught like that. But she could for the life of hers not recall what that was about. It didn't fit into anything else she wrote down yesterday. It just made no sense. Was she to meet someone there? Unlikely. Even if she had forgotten all about an appointment like that, who would meet up with her? And at that time and place? It was driving her crazy. In the end there was probably just one way to find out. Even if it turned out to be nothing, she could still have a nice stroll through the nightly Central Park...

And so Nia Winters arrived at the scene. Dressed in a plain, dark gray mantle that made her blend in neatly with the dim lighting, she breathed in the refreshing night air and slowly strolled through the park, with no clear goal and no expectations. However, not without a spark of hope either.

Progressive Arcanum

Zombehs said
Veili

Since she fully expected to be denied access to the weapon, Elizabeth didn't really react right away. It took her a full second to comprehend that this guy was actually willing to part with the sword, a potentially bad idea. Another full second to formulate a befuddled "Really?" and a third one to react and grab the handle, pulling it out of Veilis hands with little regard for the safety of his fingers.

The little crowd around them had mostly dispersed by then, but the remaining few observers scuttled away now, at the sight of Elizabeth Seyes with a longsword in her hands. 'Smart little buggers', she thought. Completely disregarding the possible hurry Veili was in, Lizzy took a very close look at the tool, the transition between blade and handguard/handle in specific. She devoured every inch of it with her eyes, turning the blade to view all of it in different angles of light. It was hard to say if she actually received viable information like this, since she merely produced incomprehensible but numerous 'Huh.' and 'Mhm.' sounds while doing so, but the truth is, she learned all she needed to from this procedure. After the visual inspection was covered, she pointed the tip at Veili, stretching her right arm out and holding the weapon almost perfectly horizontal, as if to test out its weight...with virtually zero visible effort. Lizz then ran her left thumb over the length of the blades edge to test its sharpness, portraying an expression of decided approval.

"This isn't half bad handiwork. Where'd you get that?"

, she asked while running her index finger over the contour of the runes etched into the material, wrinkling her nose at what she perceived to be the main flaw of the swords design. Or rather, at the fact that a lot of effort and time went into this specific detail the weapon was well presentable without. Not really waiting for an answer, the girl cut a slow diagonal line through the air between them, supporting her dominant hand with her left one. Not to support the weight of the sword, but to increase the precision and elegance of the cut. All of this yielded her a disapproving look of the guard who initially stopped Veili, but the man didn't dare to intervene again after the Headmaster stopped him just earlier. She tossed the blade into the air, flipping it by precisely 360 degrees before catching it at the handle again.

"Nicely balanced."

What happened then was less to be expected, and caused people to walk around them in a wider respectful distance. She implied flipping and catching it again, only the catching part went missing. Instead the blade gradually slowed down on its way to the ground, coming to a full halt roughly at the height of Elizabeths shoulder, where it kept floating, pointing forward. For a moment, it seemed as if the girl was aiming over the blade of the weapon, much like someone would aim with a rifle, before she grabbed it out of its hovering position again. Finally, she rammed the blade half a foot into the earth again, holding the handle with her right and setting a foot roughly at the half point between tip and pommel. Applying force to test out how sturdy the material was. One could now argue about human muscle performance and the stability of metal, but everything about Lizz made the attentive observer suspect that she could actually break a sword in two like that. Not this time though, for more than one reason.

"Very accessible, a little unprecise and it could do without the enchantment if you ask me. How much are you selling it for?"

Everything she had seen about Veili so far made her assume he was some sort of merchant. That'd contradict his appearance greatly, but of all people Elizabeth should not be the person to even consider this train of thought.

Magik Ther Was

I'm gonna be honest with you here. I was contemplating to call this thing off. For quite a while and not without agony. The main reason to this being a second RP I enrolled for that has a roughly similar theme and where I thought up a character that I'm very much in love with at this moment. I was afraid that due to the other RP taking off faster, I'd get my saturation with the magic themed world before this one here could take up speed, that me liking my other brain child better would cause me only achieve sub-standard performance here (that's still a thing though) and then the high expectations/pressure from the advanced tag ...

But then this IC opener. I read it twice, and then again with this.
All the magic is back. Kissshot, you wonderful bastard. Catching up on the OOC now, writing a lengthy post later tonight.