The Kethencian College of Magic RP (Part 3)

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

"What. in. the. world." Said Nix as the crowd of spirits he'd unleashed filed back into their Parlor, Billy and Aldric Bringing up the rear, the old knight very pointedly standing between Billy and the rest of them. Before going in, Aldric turned one last time and spoke in a deep, clear voice to the boy.

"You keep your promise, boy, or I'll know. My countrymen come though here all the time."

"I swear on my heathen gods, Mr. Lichtenstein." Billy replied, looking the man square in the eye.

He regarded Billy for a few moments more, as though considering whether to trust such an oath. Then, silently, he stepped through back into the parlor and closed the door behind him. The hall was empty and silent save for Billy and Nix, who ambled up grinning.

"Well well, Billy boy, look at you." he said, grinning. "I expected you have dead either way, but looks like you took another option. So, what line did you feed that pack to get em' to back off?" He leaned uncomfortably close.

"No such line." Billy said, leaning back in proportion. "I only told him the sort of danger Southern Cross was in, and promised to save it."

That raised an eyebrow. Nix's grin seemed to widen. "Anybody else, Billy boy, and-"

"Where's my friend?" Billy asked quickly, looking around.

"Ahhhh, yes, about the little man. Decided to start his training early. Now we aren't allowed to actually teach him any tricks, buuuuuut...."

The old man put a hand over Billy's shoulder and walked him quickly down the hall. It felt like hours, turning and twisting in the hallways, until finally they came at last to a door that opened into a courtyard the same color as everything else around here. In the middle of it stood a crowed of jeering, exuberant people, and single long buffet table. Billy began running as soon as he figured out what must be going on, shoving aside figures in black as he went to break through to the center.

Gob was there, sitting on the table, surrounded by a feast. Meticulously laid out and amazing, it blew the cafeteria food out of the water. The meat glistened, the fruit was just ripe, there were things that Billy had never seen before but inspired deep urges within him. In the middle of all this sat Gob. He was sweating.

"GOB!" Billy said, in a panic. "Whatever you do, don't eat! This is the food of the dead! If you eat this you can never-"

"Hey, chum, step back. You want to break his concentration?" Said a monstrous voice behind him. Billy turned, and came face to face with teeth. The teeth extended into a face, the face of something Billy had only ever see pictures of. A Shark, an enormousness, floating shark, it gums engorged and red and with scars covering it's long grey body. Billy knew this shark. This shark, specifically.

"Mappu Tappu, the Knight who comes for the drowned." He whispered, in a voice somewhere between fear, awe, and fanboyish glee. He glanced around the crowed he'd so rudely shoved aside earlier. Atti the Slow and Inevitable, Granny Goodnight, Castor the Great Child, Princess of the Dead Allissa Crawford, Greatest Swordsman of the Dead Onigiri, Death Judge Alderman, Lios the Unexpected, The Occultist.....

Billy's brain shut down. He was surrounded by Knights. A few of them leaned in close to the blank eyed boy and Nix pushed his way through the crowed. He sighed, and snapped his fingers in front of the boys face. There was no response.

"Nix?" Mappu Tappu just had to ask.

"Yes." He said, shaking his charge slightly. He still wasn't getting anything.

"This is the lad the Lord would send to fight the abomination?"

"Yes."

The Shark turned sideways to get a better look at him, extracting boos and jeers from the Knights he'd blocked. He ran his dead shark eye up and down the boy.

"We've got our work cut out for us."

"Yes, my friend. Yes we do."

[Celadon's Penultimate]

The young mage's mind, even in unconsciousness, was swimming. Through the infinite blackish-purple of his mind's midnight, he drifted, feeling as light and burden-free as ever. The silence smiled all around him. The void echoed his warmth and joy back to him, twice, three times over.

There were no more questions to ask, now. All had been answered. All had been set right.

He was sure, now, of his goodness in serving the gods--certainly imperfect, but an earnest effort. And he was sure that people in his life meant him well--and those who didn't, would be easy to pick out and get rid of. Most of all, he knew, at last, who he was trying to please. Who he was trying to prove his worth to.

Not his friends, who might or might not be only temporary in his life. Not his family, whose love and pride in him was unconditional. Not even the gods, who saw past his efforts, and loved him despite his faults.

Himself.

Floating through the dream-like distance, the revelation resounded. His accomplishments were pleasing to present before others, but they all meant nothing if he did not love and accept himself.

And how better to love himself, than to embrace his imperfections? His accomplishments and his strengths were too easy to accept--his good grades, his decent skill in magic, his friendly nature--but what about the things that he needed to work on? His know-it-all attitude, his zealotry for knowledge and success, his impatience for those less experienced and less knowledgeable, his competitive nature with people of similar skill?

Those would require his acceptance, as well. They were just as much part of him as the good things. And if he could use them to his advantage--direct the currents into more constructive outlets--then even his weaknesses could become his strengths. He could make good weather, even out of his darkest internal storms.

The soft and gentle nothingness drew nearer, like an invisible, intangible blanket, and Wulf nestled in.

You did it, Wulf. the voice came again, You should be so--

Wulf opened his eyes to the velvet black of his sleeping mind, and the voice stopped. Was that--?

"HA!" It was, Wulf realized, pleasantly surprised by the discovery, "I should have known it. My own voice talking to me, all along. How the heck did I miss that?"

He would spend the next twenty minutes--before the professors of the Storm School took a headcount, found him missing, and came looking, to discover him unconscious near the College's front gates-- laughing at just how foolish he was being this entire time. He would be diligent to change all that, on return to the college.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

At around the same time Wulf had his revelation, Billy was stirring deep in the crypt. He regained consciousness and, as was normal when he awoke, immediately went from "Asleep" to "Not Asleep" without passing through any of the "Waking up" stages. He shot up, and looked around the secret cemetery.

Gob woke up much more naturally, and pulled himself to his feet just as Billy was running around looking for something. They both stared at each other. Then Billy started to scream. Then Gob started to scream. Then Billy began to release mana, a great whirlwind of black energy rolling around him. Gob began releasing to, a pale orange light emanating from his stomach. Then they started waving their hands in the air, jumping, and running in circles, until finally someone had enough.

"SHUT UP! I'm already embarrassed enough to be seen with you."

Billy stopped, the torrent of energy subsiding. Gob however was unable to hear Billy's tool and continued screaming, glowing, and running in circles. Billy for one didn't have the heart to make him stop.

"So, how long have we been training with those freaks? It feels like months. It's been months."

"Clatterclaws," Billy replied, "time is fluid in the land of the dead. In all probability, we've only been gone an hour at best. It just felt like one year, three months, and 9 days."

"What, like we were in some sort of exaggerated time closet?"

"Yes, something very much like an exaggerated time closet." Billy said, finally seeing his shovel and picking it up. Behind him, Gob tripped over his own feet and finally stopped screaming and glowing.

"So, that means that clone of the Head has been watching this foolishness?"

Billy's smile flipped, and he looked around to see if the Headmaster had indeed been privy to this foolishness.

"Nope, must be attending more important matters." Billy said, slamming his spade in the soft earth of the nearest grave. "Mr. Gob, come help me. These people have great work to perform."

[Zaleramancer]

Deep within the sprawl, something hid.

With his tired eyes, with his tired soul, Tiberius finally saw it.

Within the chaos, a pattern dwelt.

A thing not of closely bound rows and precise categories, but something that ebbed and flowed.

It danced the line between disorder and order. Between everything he had ever lived for and everything he had ever feared.

The self-emergent spiraling pattern of nature finding its own balance.

He reached for it, not with his body, but with magic. The touch of a summoner.

A magic that crosses planes and boundaries. A magic that lets flame walk and stone speak. One that gives the very evils of life physical form and allows the virtues to sing.

A magic that breathes reality into the unreal.

Voices to the voiceless, Bodies to the bodiless, Minds to the mindless.

Form to the ethereal.

He touched the pattern.. and it touched him.

Something huge awoke and began to move.

The debris of modern life began to flow. All around him, trash and junk flew and spun.

Toys and devises, instruments and paper, wires and vehicles began to become something more.

A figure grew from the mountains of junk and the hills of waste.

A thing of sinuous curves and many twisting limbs. A thing birthed from the lost and decayed. A thing that lived no more than a rock and no less than an entire world.

It was powerful and alien and achingly beautiful.

It saw Tiberius and he saw it.

And it sang.

It sang with a voice of swishing wires and scraping metal and skittering insects. It sang with the voice of vehicles and the sound of a city that never sleeps. It sang with all the voices that had ever spoken, and more. With the cry of the elephant and the brush of a butterfly's wing. With the dances of galaxies and the incandescent aria of a star.

With wings that soared gales of water and winds of fire, with claws that clicked on sulfur and feet that danced on clouds, it embraced life.

The vast thing turned a head larger than worlds to Tiberius.

And the singer embraced the automaton.

A small mountain of junk collapsed as the motive spirit left it, sending things rocketing around the attic. With a cacophony of sound, gravity did its work. Dust flew into the air thickly as everything settled.

Minutes passed.

A large metallic basin perched on the top of a pile began to shift and a metallic hand reached out from beneath it.

Burnished bronze that glowed with heat, it sizzled slightly in the air. An arm, head and torso followed.

Tiberius. Or someone who had been that person before.

Before something of stiff features and straight lines, now he was sleek and almost organic. Whirling cogs and shining gemstones set off a playful asymmetry.

As he freed himself, Tiberius laughed the laugh of the newly born and surprised himself by his ability to do so.

He looked over the mountains and piles and hills of junk and smiled once more.

A feeling of reverence still echoed through him. He had no idea what that had been, and had no illusions that it would happen again. That had been something that only the lucky could hope to see, and even then once in a lifetime.

He spoke to the empty air.

"Headmaster, I have observed that chaos and order are one and the same."

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Across the school several devise cracked to life, and the voice of cheery Billy Bishop exuded from each of them.

"Attention, member of the.....the......I've forgotten what I called the little group. Something something red eye action committee defense league? You know what, I don't think I actually named us. My bad, everyone. I'm so sorry, I put that right on my mental list. So, I'm just calling to say that my doubts about the headmasters special training were completely unfounded, and I apologize with all my doom and gloom talk back when we met last. Honestly, all it probably served to do was demoralize. So, I am officially striking my fears from the record, and will be working on apology gift baskets for each of you."

"Hello?"

"Helloooooooooooo?"

"Mr. Zaubar?"

"Mr. Ashgrove?"

"Miss Yamata-San?"

"Mr. Tiberius?"

"Mr. Wulf?"

"Miss Oddack?"

"Mr. James?"

"Miss Piper?"

"............................................."

"Upon further consideration, I may never have actually handed these devises out. Ghosts, wouldn't that be embarrassing?"

"............................................"

"Well, if anyone is listening, good job! I'm so happy for you, and support you 100%, regardless of who you are. Keep up the good work! Unless you're a servant of the Red Eye. Then I'm coming for you, and not just because I'm on a mission from god."

"...............Please pick up? I really want to know if you guys are all right."

[Tsubasa & Wen Tien]

Asoka walked out of the Court and began making her way back to the dining hall. It had been some time since she'd finished her test and finished talking with the student from the Mars Combat Academy. Now she'd look for the others and ask how they'd done. There was still more that was yet to come if the training was any indication.

[Ericus Europaeus (Bug)]

CONTENTS DELETED

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[Celadon's Penultimate]

The nurse was away from the infirmary for a second, when Wulf's device lit up, and Billy's voice emerged from it. On hearing it, Wulf's grogginess immediately fell away, his expression stark-serious. Straightening himself up on the infirmary bench, he snatched the device up to his mouth.

"Wulf. Go."

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

"Oh, hello Mr. Wulf. I was just thinking I hadn't actually handed these out. Boy, wouldn't that have been embarrassing. Me, talking to no one, just blabbering on into the empty infinite, talking to myself...."

"So, how are you? How did your training go? How did everyone training go? Can you go find out, if it wouldn't be to much of a bother? I'd go myself, but I am literally elbow deep in work right now."

There's a pregnant pause.

"Unless of course your some sort of Red Eye Doppleganger or someone who stole Mr. Wulfs voice, in which case I am in the Undertomb. So, kindly come down here so that I can.....Mr. Gob, what did Mr. Nix tell me to say....yeah?.......Alright.....So that I can kick your ass up between your ears."

[Celadon's Penultimate]

"Billy, trust me, I only wish I had a doppelganger right now." Wulf chuckles, but abruptly stops, clutching his side in pain, "Getting hit by lightning is nothing to play with. I'm in the infirmary right now, if you don't believe me. Come and see for yourself."

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

"You got struck by lightning? Oh my goodness, are you alright!? Or is that common for storm wizards?"

[Celadon's Penultimate]

The memory was still quite beautifully fresh, striking Wulf silent on the other end for a second.

When he did speak, his voice was taken with awe, "If it's rare, we should aspire to make it more common. I don't expect anyone to understand it, who hasn't experienced it, but...I felt the presence of the gods. Just a brief flicker, a passing glimpse, but...I felt the presence of the gods."

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Wulf hears a gasp on the other end.

"So did I!" Billy says in awed excitement. "They kept throwing things at me and hitting me in the back of the head and setting monsters on me and other things!"  He continues in awed excitement.

"One of them set me on fire once!!!" He says, glee permeating his voice.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Wulf blinked vacantly, "...Thankfully, Zeus, Odin, Thor and the others are more discrete. They set my own conscience to berate me on the winds. And let me perceive my own tears of anguish in the rain. And showed me the blackness that lay in my soul, through a show of the sky's brooding. They even fogged my mind, to forget that tall trees and iron gates are best avoided during lightning storms. It was brilliant, devastatingly so. They used my own mind, to lead me to an epiphany."

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

"Ooooo, what?"

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Wulf inhaled, as he decided to explain, "So long as I find myself within the personage of the gods--while still retaining my respect for the divine, family and nature-- I can turn my darkest internal storms into my strongest outward power."

[Philote]

"Hello?.........Billy?" Zauber sounds absentminded, as if he was responding to a thought he noticed minutes ago.

"I'm in the middle of the learning segment of my training, so sorry if I can not keep focus"

"Its amazing" he says in a quiet voice, clearly in awe. "I can see into the heart of the arcane and in there I can see myself."

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

"Oh neat, it's like there's some sort of party on the communica-" there's a sliding sound, and suddenly the blank viwescreen is filled with the close up image of a muddy skull. Then it's pulled away and darken again.

"Sorry, I have to hold it sort of in between my head and my shoulder. I have to say, it doesn't sound like you gentlemen were set on fire at all. It was much more cerebral than what I got. I'm sort of envious."

[Marvelous Miscreant]

An unpleasant wind wafted across the ancient stone mortar of the College’s outer most walls. The stench of something horrid and foul invaded the air and clawed to get in. The many trees moaned and hissed in the gloomy wind, their leaves shaking in fear. The color drained from the world as a dark storm cloud boiled and frothed in the sky above the college. It’s body a violent mass of gloomy fogs and thundering columns of pungent black smoke.

KRA-CKKK!

The deafening crash of thunder tore through the college as a searing bolt of lightning tore into the dry earth. Silence echoed. Then a second bolt struck the walls of the college, disfiguring the old stone with blacked streaks of ash. A third bolt struck one of the many towers.

Bolts began striking at random, torching the college’s grounds and walls. Ruby flames crackled and bit at the trees and grass, rendering the scene a boiling red nightmare or fire and heat. Not even the rain could quench the blazing tongues of the flames. Each drop sizzled into mist as it fell uselessly into the fiery maw of the fire. Still the lighting continued to strike, bolt after bolt, rhythmic and haunting.

From the hills that separate the college from the city rose seven figures. Their shadowy forms blackened by the overcast sky and illuminated from behind by the torrent of electric bolts.

The Acolytes approached.

-------------------------------------------

As thunder shook the college the headmaster, sitting stoically in his seat at the head of the Grand Hall, rose and faced the college’s massive front doors. He breathed in deeply, knowing what was about to transpire. He spoke, his voice amplified by magic so that it echoed and leaped to every room in the college.

“Students! The Red Eye’s Acolytes approach! They will be here soon! Prepare for war!”

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Billy's head rose up at the proclamation. He looked down at the things he had build in the short time allowed him. He wasn't nearly as prepared as he wanted to be. Nevertheless, he grabbed Gob leapt up onto his steed. It was a perfect vertical leap. He crouched inside the head and took the devise in hand in hand.

"I suggest we all meet in the great hall. Repeating, anyone who hears this meet in the great hall."

Billy looked down as his minions spidered their way up into what Gob had dubbed the cockpit. The little monster himself was climbing up into what he called the sub-cockpit. Billy had no idea what either of those terms meant.

He extended his hand.

"Are you ready?"

"I hope we don't die." Said the spider as black webs began to descend and attach to the base of the creatures mouth.

"Dying isn't so bad, clatterclaws." Billy replied. His ramshackle steed stomped it's way out of the Undertomb.