[Safeholme] A Student Renewed

[Mr. Blackbird Lore]

Fright rapidly transformed into indignation. Both hands were still inspecting the turban as she rounded the corner and stepped right into his grumpy glare. “I ttttold you, I’m convicted!” Certain this was sufficient to quell the issue, and satisfied with his handiwork, he gestured to the desk. “I’m ready.”

[Kokuten]

Drysi walked in with her shoulder bag heavy with things, with soft cotton pajamas draped over her frame. Being up the hall, neither Willow nor Drysi needed to be too presentable to visit people. In this particular instance, the triclops had brought her hair up in a small ponytail.

She glanced around the room, eyes traveling about behind a large set of circular frames that were much different than the rectangular ones she was normally seen in.

"Never been in a boy's room before," admitted Drysi before anything else, "not sure what the fuss is all about."

She made herself at home, setting out some things on the desk. First of all was a set of flash cards, some ruled, some unruled. Next was a few blank sheets of unruled paper. Then came a small crystal that was attached to a bell by a string. Finally, a simple Campus notebook.

"Alright, Krieger, tonight you're going to learn how mages studied to control a world dominated by monsters and idiots. The brain is the most powerful organ the body has, but you need to play by its rules if you want to..."

It was at this point her eyes finally found him, "... are you okay, Beany?"

[Mr. Blackbird Lore]

Watching her with his one eye, Johann was surprised by her attire. He didn't know why-- he was in his own version of pajamas. It was just very different, seeing her like this on purpose. The last time he'd seen her like this, she had been sleepwalking or something. She hadn't volunteered to dress so... comfortably?-- in front of him. Now she had.

It's cute. The necromancer jumped, startled by his own thoughts. Was that it? Did he think she was cute?? No, that couldn't be it.

"Never been in a boy's room before."

The black-clad boy snapped from his reverie at these words. "I guess, um... They aren't stttttuddd... Aren't ssss..." He grunted in frustration and sighed, turning faintly red in his anger and confusion. Why couldn't he be stutter-free for a little while? Just a little while, in his own room?

"...are you okay, Beany?"

Johann hadn't realized he was stewing until she caught him doing just that. The tint in his cheeks darkened. He tried to recover quickly, but was foiled by his dumb tongue. "I'm finnnnnne." He scowled, as if his disobedient mouth could be coerced into forgiveness for its rebellion. "Fine." He sat down at the desk, placing hands on the Necronomicon, but not yet opening its leatherbound pages. "And don't call me Beany. Please."

[Kokuten]

Johann's defensive stance made Drysi eye him carefully.

"I thought it was better than beanstalk," she considered thoughtfully, "but, alright."

Drysi made sure to bring the door to a safe shut, but not before giving a careful glance up and down the hall. Turning around, she tugged her mask off, sighing comfortably in a space where she didn't need to hide her sharpened teeth. Despite already being of one the demi-human species, the look made her seem all the more monstrous in the most subtle of ways.

"I'm going to make a few assumptions here, to save time," started Drysi, tucking her fists onto her hips, "You're probably pretty bright. You are capable with magic and the motions, which is why you were able to recite a sort of bindin' ritual that could seal my gran with some power source like Manon's magic."

The triclops slapped her hands on the table, "But that's what makes ordinary mages, or the ones that die young."

She let that sit for a moment, a small smile of pride cracking her facade. Unable to contain it, she continued, "My Da said that. He said that what makes a mage into a wizard or archmage is mastering the art of study or learnin'. Mr. Flynn, Ms. Smith, Ms. Sumedha, the dean and Ms. Alstad, what sets them apart is study, immersion in the art. You live the material, every day. Study is engagement of the source material with your senses, so that you can call it without thinkin'. You have particular needs, but from what I read on the internet, it doesn't mean you're slow, you just need to do it different. Which is why I'd like to introduce you to a tool that has made me the incredibly intelligent, incredibly beautiful wizard you see before you."

Drysi snapped up one of the small paper slips.

"The flash card."

She paused for effect.

[Mr. Blackbird Lore]

"...better than beanstalk..."

"Don't like that either," he mumbled under his breath, then waited for her to sit down across from him. As she prattled off her praises, he instinctively prepared himself for the back hand. These sorts of things always swung like a pendulum, to and fro. He wasn't prepared for her to slap the table, and he jumped.

When she finally got around to her big reveal, he blinked nonplussed, then tried to engage one of her previous statements. "So it's like pedddd... pedagggg... pppeddd... !!!" There isn't a word to describe the frustrated sounds that erupted from the boy, but it was somewhere between a steam locomotive's whistle and an anime hero's power-up growl. "Study of learning," he uttered each word slowly and through gritted teeth, scowling all the while.

This was going to take forever. So to distract from his issues, he flung the book open and flipped to the page with the forced phylactery spell, Phylakterium verpflichtend. He pointed, suggesting she should show him what she meant.

It didn't even cross his mind that the entirety of the book was in German.

[Kokuten]

The abridged necronomicon gave Drysi a bit of pause, as if she had accounted for everything except the source material. It was apparent that Johann's spellbook was part of a new line that Drysi did not want to toe. Nevertheless, the moment passed and she sat with him.

A swipe of her hand brought a few flash cards in an array in front of Johann.

"I don't know what I'm looking at, but I bet I can still break it down. A spell has certain components if you aren't already attached to the source of it. Flash cards allow you to memorize information that comes in bits, and for you, specifically, it helps defeat your dyslexia," explained Drysi, setting the pen out. "When you remove the information from the patterns that made it hard to absorb, you'll retain it."

Another swipe, and the notebook opened and slid in front of the boy. "When you have the components written down, write out the incanation, space out the words and write on every other line. The go over it again, read it and see if it is easier to grasp."

The crystal came up now, glowing as Drysi touched it, "When you practice your incantation, you have to hear yourself say it, and this will hold your words so you can correct your speech."

She continued to stare at the German on the page, as if it would help her understand, "This is what I used to learn Gran's magic. It's what I use to learn Mr. Flynn's art now."

[Mr. Blackbird Lore]

Johann was bashful when Drysi mentioned she couldn't read it, but it was quickly replaced by a frown. He hated writing-- and not because he was bad at it. Contrary to popular belief, he had very clean penmanship. He hated writing because trying to read his own hand made him feel-- and look-- like a complete idiot. Who couldn't read their own writing? Idiots.

So he took a deep breath, drew out metal-framed pen, and set to his first flash card, doing as instructed. He made a column for components then for the incantation, then scratched it out and shoved the ruined card aside in frustration. With the next one, he took a new approach. He labeled the first side Components, then listed them out, taking care to put space between each one:

COMPONENTS:
- Beschwörung
- Phylaktery
- Sealant or corkery
- Soulful of mana

Glancing at it, he realized that he had slowly transitioned from German to English. He had a quiet chuckle to himself about that. A German student writing English during his Japanese studies. Language was weird.

Then he read what he had written. Carefully. "A soulful of mana," he murmured, processing. Then his eyes shot wide.

"Drysi! Ththththt--- gaaah!" He slammed his hands on the desk in frustration and excitement, then shoved the flashcard into her hands. "I shshshouldna done it!"

He swallowed, took a deep breath, and tried to imagine he was incanting. "The amount of mana required to perform that spell was well beyond my ability." There was a clear difference in his voice. It was controlled, and cadenced like a professor giving a lecture. He even made points with one hand, as if to emphasize and punctuate his points. "Typically, a soulful of mana is a death sentence. The usual workaround is to borrow the mana of the one being trapped. I didn't do that. I just borrowed Manon's nose..."

With the words out, and without error by some miracle, he sat down and let Drysi reach the same conclusion he did. When he saw the revelation in her eyes, he nodded. "Manon is incredibly powerful. Stupidly powerful. Like, Mmmmmr. Flynn, orrrrr Ms. Smith levels of powerful."

[Kokuten]

As arcane machinations and discovery grew, so did Drysi's wide eyes. First, she spoke incredulously, breathlessly.

"The Clown Girl."

Then, the reasoning behind it all, the clear and succint explanation, began to make it more real. She repeated the phrase again, deep in thought.

"The Clown Girl."

The triclops began to pace, as the emotion began to fill her face with red, and said it once more, appearing incensced and threatened.

"THE CLOWN GIRL!?"

Drysi looked down at the card, fuming as she searched for a reason for this not to be true. The words in German didn't mean much to her, but she could clearly make out the English. Johann could see the wheel spinning behind her emerald eyes.

"The nose... is probably some kind of artifact... Powerful?" poked Drysi, writhing her hands and working the thoughts out. "It has to be. The mask she was wearing was probably the same. She can't even use magic now. It must be, the nose and mask were just tools, ancient and powerful."

Her three eyes flicked back to the cards, "It's probably because you're translating half-way through. A soulful of mana means something else than a source of mana. You should keep your study materials in one language if you can help it."

Drysi looked at the list in the book, matching the letters to the German on the flashcard and counting to the specific, damning component. "Here, this is it, right? What can this mean in German?"

[Mr. Blackbird Lore]

Johann nodded solemnly. "The Clown Girl." Seeing Drysi become animated seemed to leech his own energy; his excitement continued vicariously in the necromancer's peer.

"It ccccertainly must bbbbbe powerful. It didn't feel ppppppowerful, but it had to be."

His eyes traced her finger as it counted to the German inscription. "Eine Seele voller Mana. I've seen another that said, Eine Seelenvoll aus Mana. Either way, it's the sammmmme thing. A soul FULL of mana."

He paused to reorganize a few stray thoughts, and when he spoke he had his lecturing voice once more. "I've been reading up on some fundamentals. A soulful-- or a soul full of-- mana is a generic measurement. It's approximately the average maximum amount of mana the average body- mundane or magickal- contains at the peak of life." He raised and lowered his exposed palms like weights trying to balance a scale. "Souls are hard to measure without... use. So eine Seele voller Mana is a very common measurement of the mana ingredient." He didn't bother to mention that many spells toward the back of the book required dozens, if not more. Those spells were well beyond his intentions, and couldn't possibly be repurposed to achieve what he wanted.

[Kokuten]

The pages of the book crackled as Drysi began to leaf through, trying to fit patterns of words together to glean some extra meaning. She dreaded the idea of having to do this for the rest of her life, Mages tended to expend their native resources quickly early in their careers. Archmages trended to knowing several languages to glean understanding from far off places.

This would be a learning experience for her as much as it was for him.

"The spell didn't cause her any harm," analyzed the triclops, her three eyes scanning lines, before she made a swipe of her hand and willed the pages back to the original spell. "Peak Optimum Containment. I think that's what they call the phenomenon in English, at least, that's what Chablis calls it. A soulful of mana... consumes your peak optimum containment..."

The cut-gem quality of her eyes became glassy as she thought on this.

"We have to test it. Manon didn't just survive the procedure, she kept going," the triclops looked at him, with a determination that seemed almost dangerous. "If Manon has the potential of being that powerful, she may be, or have, the key to practicing these spells in a closed environment."