[Percival's Lair] There Came a Soft Rustling

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Mr. Blackbird Lore
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Re: There Came a Soft Rustling

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She watched with interest as the tea was prepared and sugar was provided. Her eyes were shifty again, jumping between sugar and Professor with uncertainty. Tanuki simply had to remind herself there were no more tricks. Probably. The street urchin deep inside her refused to believe it.

Timid hands plucked the tongs and claimed three cubes with those tongs. Two hands gingerly gripped the mug and pulled it to her chest. There was something wonderful about a hot, fresh drink. Comforting.

It was several seconds of silence before Tanuki realized she had spaced out. "Oh, umm..." She paused to think, then blinked and raised an eyebrow. Her face seemed to say, You can't be serious. That's stupid. "It's in Safeholme. In Osaka. In Japan." She emphasized her pauses, as if she'd been asked to explain the kanji to a Japanese teacher.
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Kokuten
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Re: There Came a Soft Rustling

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Percival chuckled.

"All correct," announced the Alchemist as he carried himself, and his tea, along to a lever on the far wall, "We are indeed in Japan, in Osaka, and in Safeholme. Quite broad, quite safe as an answer."

KrrrrrrrRANK. Hooking his arm on the lever, Percival used his weight to tug it down. A small choir of gears and pulleys began to turn and cycle as a folding, metal staircase dropped from the ceiling. The rubber feet of the bottom rung struck the polished, cement floor with a thud and Mr. Caxton took a sip of his tea.

"You were asking, how do I just have a lair," he started, speaking over the sound of the rattling his shoes caused as he ascended the stairs. "Quite straightforward, I'm very well-read and intelligent; and people pay me to think for them. Then I take the money they give me for thinking for them to put into my lair so I can read, experiment and do even better thinking, and so the cycle goes. Now as for where it comes from--..."

Setting his tea on a small little shelf at the top of the staircase, Mr. Caxton turned the knob on a rather ordinary looking door at the top. Then, grabbings his tea, he stepped out, "--a cave troll had made his home here four or so years ago--..."

She could hear him talking as if she could still make out the words.
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Mr. Blackbird Lore
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Re: There Came a Soft Rustling

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Tanuki rocked forward onto her feet, squatting on the innervator. Was he really about to reveal his super secret private lair to her!? She took a great lunge of step down to the floor, and fell into a crouch to soften the landing; she didn't want to spill her tea. By the time he reached the fifth step, she knew he wasn't coming back for her, and immediately followed. Her tabis were a nearly silent scuff on the stairs, easily concealed by the Professor's own clunky movements.

That was something she was sure she would never get used to. Everyone on the bright side was so loud. Their words, their feet, their feelings. Everything was so loud. Professors barking commands down long hallways at raucously laughing students as they ran past slamming doors. So loud. It reminded her that she wasn't of this world every day; but it was also a small source of pride: she had a skill these other children would never grasp.

Her head shot up to Percival's back. "A cave troll? In the city? That's silly. There's no caves."
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Kokuten
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Re: [Percival's Lair] There Came a Soft Rustling

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When the two of them stepped through the door, they were greeted by an orange sky. The clouds were pacing away slowly as night approached from the east. In the west, the full moon was bringing full light over the swaying tree-tops.

“A cave troll in the city,” Percival repeated as he stepped out onto a small, wooden porch ahead of a quaint looking door. “It had moved in on Ruarc’s property before the place had been suitably warded, and we let it stay for a while. When the school opened, it threatened to eat the children, so we… drove it out. Left a beautiful cave behind.”

The porch was mounted at the top of a mound that came half-way up to the trees surrounding it. Small, ornately carved pillars of square stone stood to one side of the mound, covering up some raw entrance into the side. At the top of the mound was the rounded sky-light that let in the light from earlier. After a moment, a wrought iron lamp, attached to a pole near the door, sputtered to life. The crystal inside the glass casing was sensitive to them.

“This is a portion of the Wilderwood that most creatures ignore, a little private space, thanks to the troll. No paths, no fae, barely any animals. A truly quiet spot.”

It was true, the sounds of the forest night-life were somewhat distant, despite the trees that hovered over the mound. Even the bugs wandered at the edge.

“My favorite part is the stars.”

Percival looked up, leaning on the lamppost, somehow dimming it. In the absence of its light, the night sky began to open up as cleanly as it could, this close to the city.
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Re: [Percival's Lair] There Came a Soft Rustling

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Tanuki dipped her head to take a sip of tea as she stepped out and paused. Her head perked up, the view capturing her attention. Up until that point, she had assumed it was merely a story to tell children. Adults did that: said things that weren't true, sometimes for fun- like stories- and sometimes to keep secrets- like where babies come from. So when the fiction was revealed as fact, Tanuki had to reevaluate everything the professor had just said.

She squatted at the edge of the porch and stared out at the Wilderwood. "But that means..." She looked up at the stars. There were more of them than she remembered. It was really pretty. She wished she could keep that moment. A picture of that sky was prettier than a lot of the little trinkets she'd acquired over the years.

"But that means trolls are real," she told him, barely believing her own words. Yes, she'd seen a lot of magic since starting school, and yes, she'd learned that she had magic too. But that didn't mean she was just going to roll over every time someone started telling a fairytale. She clambered onto the porch railing in her familiar squat. It was a place and posture of comfort, elevated and ready to spring away at the first sign of trouble. She sipped the tea and alternated between studying the night sky and studying the alchemist. She looked like she had additional questions, but was keeping them uncharacteristically silent.
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Re: [Percival's Lair] There Came a Soft Rustling

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The Alchemist continued to watch the stars, as if he were going to catch one of them moving out of place at any moment. Something else lingered in his stare as he watched them, but only the God-Slayers of Safeholme would know what he was looking for. Catching himself, he tore his gaze back down to the treeline, and finally looked back to Tanuki in her corner.

“That’s right, you’re fresh to the world of the gifted, aren’t you? Like Fairburn,” said Percival, his smile widening, “It’s a unique perspective, but one that isn’t at a disadvantage. One of the most powerful mages in the world learned of magic when she was your age. The Ice Queen, if you’ve heard of her.”

He sipped his tea and caught sight of an owl watching him from the trees. “I’ve been studying alchemy, the sciences, and the pillars of magic since I was six, and, even now, I constantly find things that are new and different. If trolls are new to you, just wait until you see spriggans, golems, haemonculi, triclopsi, dragons, shapeshifters… The world will always be ten percent larger than you think it is, even when you think you’ve seen it all.”

An empty space of silence opened that sounded like her opportunity to broach another question, but the professor threw in one more thing, “What do you want to learn here, Tanuki?”
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Re: [Percival's Lair] There Came a Soft Rustling

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The name Fairburn slid off her like water on leather, but the mention of the Ice Queen perked her up. And spriggans and haemonculi and shapeshifters!! Whatever had been holding her questions in had been unstoppered, but before she could unleash the torrent on poor Professor Caxton, he surprised her with another question.

She looked around the balcony a few times, then drank some of her tea. "Umm, everything I guess." She shrugged uncertainly. "There's just so much I don't know, how do I even say what I want to know?" She shrugged again. "But mostly I think I just want to know why I have magic. It doesn't make sense. I just... do things. I do different things, but I just do things like everyone else."
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Kokuten
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Re: [Percival's Lair] There Came a Soft Rustling

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"Intuitive Scholastics would be a good course for you. Smith has nailed down what it means to be an Adept in the modern understanding of magic," Mr. Caxton took one last sip of his tea, finishing off the dregs. Then, turning the cup over, he twisted the bottom ring with his fingers.

foooooooVWIP! The cup glowed and then disappeared from his hand. At that, he paced to the end of the deck, the skylight grabbed his attention. "My realm of knowledge lies with the experimental and academic. Very good at studying magic, not very capable of using it."

Carefully he applied pressure to one of the shuttered windows and it slid open effortlessly. "Ah, thought I sensed a draft from somewhere."
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Re: [Percival's Lair] There Came a Soft Rustling

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“Intu-what?” She scowled over the large words. “What kinda name is that? Sounds like a nerd class.”

Nerd was a new word for Tanuki, but ever since discovering what it meant, she’d abused it. Anyone falling short of her strict definition of self sufficiency was a nerd. Most students and many teachers were now nerds, according to one overconfident orphan. As if to prove her point, Professor Caxton made his tea cup disappear. Very nerd behavior.
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Kokuten
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Re: [Percival's Lair] There Came a Soft Rustling

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“Quite the opposite. There are no books. No homework. No assignments. Just doing.”

Percy chuckled wrly as he held up his hand and a polished, ornate scepter appeared. He pressed one end of the rod into the sliding skylight panel, and a shuttering sound could be heard. A louder clunk of some kind of locking mechanism resonated on the hill.

“Could have sworn I laid the lines properly… No mind. Intuitive Scholastics. It’s mostly internal pursuits. Strangely meditative. As much as I like to make fun of adepts, Smith knows what she’s doing.”

Then, there came a soft rustling at the treeline, and the bushes moved as a figure pressed through. Tanuki could see a pair of eyes staring at the Professor, glimmering in the dark. He hadn’t seemed to have noticed just yet, and what crawled into the clearing was something not too unlike the fountain guardians, or the bullish gate guardian. The creature was feminine in shape, roughly knee-high, with a mane of wild, blonde hair. Green, tattered robes shaped her diminutive form and helped her blend in with the dark forest.

She came a few yards from the treeline, and then stopped when she caught sight of Tanuki. Her mouth was obscured by some type of ragged, white undersuit that formed neatly to her face under the nose. It was hard to tell anything from her expression, except that her eyes were wide, and wild.

The blonde wildling stared at the girl, like a wolf that had come upon another creature it hadn’t expected.
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