Normally, being sent home in the middle of the day would be cause for excitement, but that afternoon, Eunice fearfully paid a cart driver as though it had been the darkest of nights. She didn't speak much during the ride, and furtively looked around herself the entire time. When she arrived home, she quickly got off the cart before the driver could even think to help her, and scurried inside as though she were being followed by a monster.
She had nothing to worry about, where that was concerned.
The monster had gotten there five hours ago.
It was unusually chilly inside, and completely dark, since Eunice had closed her shutters before she'd left for the Ranclyffe house two days before. She moved past her cold hearth toward the small metal box with her fire starting stones by familiarity alone, considering the serious problem that open windows might allow the wrong someone to see that she was home alone. Then, struck by the frustrating knowledge that she could be "alone" while living in the middle of the College grounds, she stood still and sighed. The annoyance only lasted a moment, however.
The box and the stones themselves were so cold that they hurt her fingers. It took her four tries to get the sparks to catch anything in her hearth. She wound up so focused on getting the fire going that only when she stood up and turned around did she notice that a repeated script- the same passage in three different languages- was writing itself on her walls.
Destruction DEVOUR Creation Birth Annihilation AWAKEN Expulsion Absorption DOMINATE Immolation Consumption Inspiration ASPIRE Possession
Destruction DEVOUR Creation Birth Annihilation AWAKEN Expulsion Absorption DOMINATE Immolation Consumption Inspiration ASPIRE Possession
She dropped the box with the stones at once, and ridiculously enough, they sparked again as they caught on each other. The sparks leaped into the hem of her outer skirt, starting a small fire there that turned an unnatural blue. She screamed and jumped, tearing off her all of her skirts, as well as her apron, while a low, rumbling laughter seemed to crush in on her from all sides of the one-room home.
"Oh, leave me be!" she cried, desperate. "Please, please! I didn't say anything about that last time, just like I promised! Please leave me alone!"
An unseen hand smoothed itself over her hair, then removed itself. Eunice turned around while whipping at her head, tripping over her skirts and falling backward onto her side. Suddenly, the fresh fire in the hearth leaped up and gave off a light far brighter than was naturally possible, making her eyes feel as though they would soon melt out of her face.
"What do you want?!" she hollered, her voice made raw with fear. "Why won't you please leave me alone?!"
And suddenly, instead of continuing to circle the walls, the illusory script began to crawl up her own bare legs, which terrified her into crying. Outside, someone tried her door and found it locked.
"Help me! Help! Break the door!" Eunice bellowed at once, not caring at all that whoever it was would be breaking in on her half naked body. "He's going to kill me! Please, break the door at once!"
Murmurs that she couldn't hear built up outside the door as she rolled over and attempted to crawl away from her hearth. When she felt the dry, warm grip on her ankles, she squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to look at the person she knew was responsible.
"Please don't hurt me," she sobbed, her voice low and cracked.
One sand papery hand came away from her ankles and shamelessly gripped the front of her right upper thigh instead. A third hand whose presence she couldn't explain took hold of her right shoulder, and in a split second, she was flipped over. Her breath came in voiced pants, and her eyes burned. Outside, the murmurs grew louder, and there was a serious thud against the door, immediately followed by a solid, horrified male holler. Eunice struggled to hear what precisely the problem had been, but couldn't make it out. Whatever it was, it commanded the immediate departure of what seemed like a half of the sources of the voices.
The hands on her ankle and her thigh were removed, and the third slid from the top of her shoulder to her back, to sit her up. When she opened her eyes and realized that the Drow she so feared was less than an inch away from her, she screamed and shut them tight again. A rich chuckle burbled up from the creature at her side, and she felt the skin of his knuckles grazing her cheek. The voices from outside faded in intensity, and the Drow actually put a gentle arm around the trembling Human woman. She heard her breath quicken, and felt her muscles tighten...
Beside her, the dark Elf squeezed her a bit tighter. Not tight, like a captor, but quickly and softly, like a close friend, or even a lover.
Someone made vocal note of the door. Locked and warded- although no one could tell which particular ward had been used. The matter became less about finding out what was behind the ward and more about the ward itself. Meanwhile, Eunice watched the illusory script on the walls tell her exactly which ward had been used, when it had been invented, the history of its use, the arcane efficacy threshold...
Why don't they just counterspell it? Eunice wondered. There are master wizards out there- or if not, everyone knows I work for Ranclyffe, and that they ought to just call him.
"And prove that they as an organization have languished since his retirement?" the script on the walls suddenly read. "You should know a thing or two about the level of pride most magic workers entertain."
Eunice shuddered, then felt the encouraging squeeze of the Drow again.
"Kip up, Eunice," the script read, pulling, stretching, and splitting until the new sentence had been formed. "There's worse things to be than prone to panic, or overly curious. Stupid, for example. Ignorance is easy to solve, but stupidity is rather sadly permanent."
Eunice bit her lips, hearing the echo of words she'd forgotten. Who had said such a thing before? Her mind raced...
...and time passed...
...and the voices outside faded into silence. Eunice realized that either everyone must have thought the danger had passed, or that whatever had happened as a result of the door being banged against was worse than the problem that was happening beyond it.
Because I'm not worth any more trouble than a splinter, or a bruised arm, or even a touch activated spell, she thought grimly.
And next to her, the Drow actually peacefully laid his head on her shoulder. His silvery hair, tightly coiled atop his head like a peasant woman's, smelled of rose oil and wood fire.
I...but I...but I...but why would he do that? Eunice thought, completely stunned unto stillness. I could inflict wounds, or enfeeble him, or do any other touch attack at all!
Beside her, Bahlzair smiled slowly.
Oh. Oh... was I supposed to think...?
For a single second, Eunice found herself mind-bendingly reluctant to harm the creature who had repeatedly assaulted her, and instantly questioned her own sanity. Before her, illusory script drained off her legs and onto the floor.
"Sanity is wildly overrated. Some of the most talented practitioners I know are quite out of their minds."
"What will you do when the guards come?" Eunice asked, a sharp edge of frustration that she hadn't expected slicing through her tone. "They're going to come, you know. Someone will get them."
"I think you doubt that more than I do. Further, most defenders of the law are not only lazy, but quite unimaginative," Bahlzair replied, the letters of the illusory script simply rearranging themselves and splitting into different letters until the sentence completed itself for him. "They are satisfied with only one death per victim, and try to get it over with as quickly as possible."
Eunice put both hands on her mouth, skirt still in hand, overcome with the incredible urge to giggle. "They're going to get you and hang you," she said firmly, when she could manage to suppress herself.
"The first part is too great of a challenge," the illusory script claimed, lifting itself from the floor as Bahlzair himself got up. "They wouldn't have the energy for the second."
Eunice marveled at how the lack of his closeness felt so different at that point than it had when he allowed her to get up and flee the room while he was supposedly "bedridden."
"I put up all that screaming; someone's bound to get the guards," Eunice replied, turning to watch Bahlzair stroll into her kitchen. "Where are- I haven't cooked anything; get out of there! You had better not start anything; Ser Voyonov wasn't right about where the poison was in your body, but I know it's there, and I-"
"And you WHAT?"
The illusory script suddenly tore from a flat, inky black to a charged blue, then a glaring red, which- when combined with the monstrous size of the characters that blazed in midair- startled Eunice as surely as if Bahlzair had vocally yelled at her.
"WHAT PRECISELY WILL YOU DO TO ME?"
"I... I-" Eunice jumped up suddenly, bunching her skirts- completely unharmed by the "fire" that had caught them before- and turning all the way around to face the smiling Drow. "I can make a fog so dense that you can't get away from it."
The script melted down into a smaller size, returned to a calm, coal black, and rested itself just over the bare ebony shoulder, where the brilliant red eyes beheld them for a moment before turning themselves back to the intended recipient of the message.
"So can I."
Eunice blinked and pursed her lips for a moment. "I can strike you immobile! You'd lay here until the guard came!"
"Only if I did not do the same to you first."
"I could- I could even trap your soul!" Eunice proclaimed with clenched fists, stamping her foot for emphasis.
"And so, dear Eunice, can I." Bahlzair tilted his head to the side, like the delicate female creature he had pretended to be when he had first met Eunice. "We are so very similar."
"No, we're n-"
"Or, if you think we are different, then bring me your proof, as you would do for any other thesis, and see if it will withstand questioning."
"Well, I don't murder people, for a start," Eunice snorted at once. "I don't terrorize people in their homes!"
Bahlzair leaned his head from side to side with a false frown, as though Eunice had given him something to think over. Reaching into his braided and coiled hair, he pulled out his sheathed knife, which caused the long, heavy braid to fall straight down his back. "Have you ever seen someone harmed and been amused by it? Ever looked a bit too long at an object that wasn't yours? Ever, perhaps, thought of working a bit of wickedness on someone who came over for tea and stayed to dinner, thereby becoming more annoyance than company?"
"I fail to see what any of that has to do with acts of murder, or the intent to do harm," Eunice retorted, crossing her arms- and then suddenly realizing her skirts were still in her hands.
Bahlzair crossed his own arms, knife still in hand, and leaned on the wall immediately next to the kitchen. The sheathed blade patted gently against his left side. "Ah, intentions. Desires. The cherished wishes, buried deeply in your heart. To, say, watch that murderous demon cuckolded bitch suffer just a bit longer?"
"No," Eunice replied firmly, feeling her nails jab into the flesh of her upper arms.
"To have a look at that transcribed scroll?"
"No!"
"Put that pillow over Lady Ranclyffe's face, so you could...what was it? End her suffering and yours?"
Eunice pursed her lips, but said nothing. Bahlzair pushed himself off the wall and turned into the kitchen, leaving script scrawling itself into the air behind him.
"You do have a fear that I don't, a forced ignorance that I couldn't abide, and an inexperience that I can no longer claim, but those little things don't make you different than I. They are only obstacles, and obstacles can always be removed."
"For what?" Eunice asked, following Bahlzair into the kitchen. Terrifyingly enough, she arrived just in time to watch all of her cabinets open at once, in response to Bahlzair moving his opened right hand from right to left, as though he'd been turning a page in a book. "To what end? What would be the point of you removing my obstacles?"
"You want to learn spellcraft, don't you?" the dark Elf replied, seriously contemplating the meager spices Eunice could afford. "Such a beautiful flower as willpower cannot grow when trapped in a house. You want your people to need and appreciate you, so you seek to become their teacher and protector. I'll share what I know, and you will teach your people what they need. The rest is yours to use as you see fit. How could you possibly make edible stew without any saffron?"
"That's expensive," Eunice explained, watching two small bunches of poorly dried herbs soar from her hanging cabinet to Bahlzair's outstretched right hand. They floated about two inches above it, and the dark Elf twisted his hand slightly, making them rotate in response. "And why should-"
"This is almost stale. We'd better make time, before we begin spellcraft, to talk about how to keep a kitchen. This is a travesty; I know driders who keep their feeding areas in better condition."
"Look, you've tried to kill me twice now," Eunice said with a frown. "Why should I trust you to teach me arcane spellwork?
"When did I ask you to trust me?" Again, the illusory script appeared just over Bahlzair's shoulder, and he looked over the other shoulder teasingly, with an uncomfortably pleasant smile. "And by the way, you may want to dissuade people from touching your door until I teach you the dispel."
"And when would that be?" Eunice complained. "I should scream for the guards right this minute."
"But you haven't yet, because you know that if you did, I'd be gone like a nightmare, leaving you to go to the lock up for enchanting your door with the express intent to harm, if not kill, whomever touched it." Bahlzair shrugged, his shoulder pushing through the illusory script and forcing it to fade more quickly. "I'm just as good at getting into the prisons as I am at getting out of them, and I can stay as long as I like without tipping anyone off. If you try to convince the guards that I've come to visit you in there, you'll be thrown in with the crazies for life, and you may never be rid of me. Now then, I'm going to start making some lunch- are you just going to stand there? It's easier for me to poison you when you're not watching me."
"Please don't hurt me," she sobbed, her voice low and cracked.
One sand papery hand came away from her ankles and shamelessly gripped the front of her right upper thigh instead. A third hand whose presence she couldn't explain took hold of her right shoulder, and in a split second, she was flipped over. Her breath came in voiced pants, and her eyes burned. Outside, the murmurs grew louder, and there was a serious thud against the door, immediately followed by a solid, horrified male holler. Eunice struggled to hear what precisely the problem had been, but couldn't make it out. Whatever it was, it commanded the immediate departure of what seemed like a half of the sources of the voices.
The hands on her ankle and her thigh were removed, and the third slid from the top of her shoulder to her back, to sit her up. When she opened her eyes and realized that the Drow she so feared was less than an inch away from her, she screamed and shut them tight again. A rich chuckle burbled up from the creature at her side, and she felt the skin of his knuckles grazing her cheek. The voices from outside faded in intensity, and the Drow actually put a gentle arm around the trembling Human woman. She heard her breath quicken, and felt her muscles tighten...
Beside her, the dark Elf squeezed her a bit tighter. Not tight, like a captor, but quickly and softly, like a close friend, or even a lover.
Someone made vocal note of the door. Locked and warded- although no one could tell which particular ward had been used. The matter became less about finding out what was behind the ward and more about the ward itself. Meanwhile, Eunice watched the illusory script on the walls tell her exactly which ward had been used, when it had been invented, the history of its use, the arcane efficacy threshold...
Why don't they just counterspell it? Eunice wondered. There are master wizards out there- or if not, everyone knows I work for Ranclyffe, and that they ought to just call him.
"And prove that they as an organization have languished since his retirement?" the script on the walls suddenly read. "You should know a thing or two about the level of pride most magic workers entertain."
Eunice shuddered, then felt the encouraging squeeze of the Drow again.
"Kip up, Eunice," the script read, pulling, stretching, and splitting until the new sentence had been formed. "There's worse things to be than prone to panic, or overly curious. Stupid, for example. Ignorance is easy to solve, but stupidity is rather sadly permanent."
Eunice bit her lips, hearing the echo of words she'd forgotten. Who had said such a thing before? Her mind raced...
...and time passed...
...and the voices outside faded into silence. Eunice realized that either everyone must have thought the danger had passed, or that whatever had happened as a result of the door being banged against was worse than the problem that was happening beyond it.
Because I'm not worth any more trouble than a splinter, or a bruised arm, or even a touch activated spell, she thought grimly.
And next to her, the Drow actually peacefully laid his head on her shoulder. His silvery hair, tightly coiled atop his head like a peasant woman's, smelled of rose oil and wood fire.
I...but I...but I...but why would he do that? Eunice thought, completely stunned unto stillness. I could inflict wounds, or enfeeble him, or do any other touch attack at all!
Beside her, Bahlzair smiled slowly.
Oh. Oh... was I supposed to think...?
For a single second, Eunice found herself mind-bendingly reluctant to harm the creature who had repeatedly assaulted her, and instantly questioned her own sanity. Before her, illusory script drained off her legs and onto the floor.
"Sanity is wildly overrated. Some of the most talented practitioners I know are quite out of their minds."
"What will you do when the guards come?" Eunice asked, a sharp edge of frustration that she hadn't expected slicing through her tone. "They're going to come, you know. Someone will get them."
"I think you doubt that more than I do. Further, most defenders of the law are not only lazy, but quite unimaginative," Bahlzair replied, the letters of the illusory script simply rearranging themselves and splitting into different letters until the sentence completed itself for him. "They are satisfied with only one death per victim, and try to get it over with as quickly as possible."
Eunice put both hands on her mouth, skirt still in hand, overcome with the incredible urge to giggle. "They're going to get you and hang you," she said firmly, when she could manage to suppress herself.
"The first part is too great of a challenge," the illusory script claimed, lifting itself from the floor as Bahlzair himself got up. "They wouldn't have the energy for the second."
Eunice marveled at how the lack of his closeness felt so different at that point than it had when he allowed her to get up and flee the room while he was supposedly "bedridden."
"I put up all that screaming; someone's bound to get the guards," Eunice replied, turning to watch Bahlzair stroll into her kitchen. "Where are- I haven't cooked anything; get out of there! You had better not start anything; Ser Voyonov wasn't right about where the poison was in your body, but I know it's there, and I-"
"And you WHAT?"
The illusory script suddenly tore from a flat, inky black to a charged blue, then a glaring red, which- when combined with the monstrous size of the characters that blazed in midair- startled Eunice as surely as if Bahlzair had vocally yelled at her.
"WHAT PRECISELY WILL YOU DO TO ME?"
"I... I-" Eunice jumped up suddenly, bunching her skirts- completely unharmed by the "fire" that had caught them before- and turning all the way around to face the smiling Drow. "I can make a fog so dense that you can't get away from it."
The script melted down into a smaller size, returned to a calm, coal black, and rested itself just over the bare ebony shoulder, where the brilliant red eyes beheld them for a moment before turning themselves back to the intended recipient of the message.
"So can I."
Eunice blinked and pursed her lips for a moment. "I can strike you immobile! You'd lay here until the guard came!"
"Only if I did not do the same to you first."
"I could- I could even trap your soul!" Eunice proclaimed with clenched fists, stamping her foot for emphasis.
"And so, dear Eunice, can I." Bahlzair tilted his head to the side, like the delicate female creature he had pretended to be when he had first met Eunice. "We are so very similar."
"No, we're n-"
"Or, if you think we are different, then bring me your proof, as you would do for any other thesis, and see if it will withstand questioning."
"Well, I don't murder people, for a start," Eunice snorted at once. "I don't terrorize people in their homes!"
Bahlzair leaned his head from side to side with a false frown, as though Eunice had given him something to think over. Reaching into his braided and coiled hair, he pulled out his sheathed knife, which caused the long, heavy braid to fall straight down his back. "Have you ever seen someone harmed and been amused by it? Ever looked a bit too long at an object that wasn't yours? Ever, perhaps, thought of working a bit of wickedness on someone who came over for tea and stayed to dinner, thereby becoming more annoyance than company?"
"I fail to see what any of that has to do with acts of murder, or the intent to do harm," Eunice retorted, crossing her arms- and then suddenly realizing her skirts were still in her hands.
Bahlzair crossed his own arms, knife still in hand, and leaned on the wall immediately next to the kitchen. The sheathed blade patted gently against his left side. "Ah, intentions. Desires. The cherished wishes, buried deeply in your heart. To, say, watch that murderous demon cuckolded bitch suffer just a bit longer?"
"No," Eunice replied firmly, feeling her nails jab into the flesh of her upper arms.
"To have a look at that transcribed scroll?"
"No!"
"Put that pillow over Lady Ranclyffe's face, so you could...what was it? End her suffering and yours?"
Eunice pursed her lips, but said nothing. Bahlzair pushed himself off the wall and turned into the kitchen, leaving script scrawling itself into the air behind him.
"You do have a fear that I don't, a forced ignorance that I couldn't abide, and an inexperience that I can no longer claim, but those little things don't make you different than I. They are only obstacles, and obstacles can always be removed."
"For what?" Eunice asked, following Bahlzair into the kitchen. Terrifyingly enough, she arrived just in time to watch all of her cabinets open at once, in response to Bahlzair moving his opened right hand from right to left, as though he'd been turning a page in a book. "To what end? What would be the point of you removing my obstacles?"
"You want to learn spellcraft, don't you?" the dark Elf replied, seriously contemplating the meager spices Eunice could afford. "Such a beautiful flower as willpower cannot grow when trapped in a house. You want your people to need and appreciate you, so you seek to become their teacher and protector. I'll share what I know, and you will teach your people what they need. The rest is yours to use as you see fit. How could you possibly make edible stew without any saffron?"
"That's expensive," Eunice explained, watching two small bunches of poorly dried herbs soar from her hanging cabinet to Bahlzair's outstretched right hand. They floated about two inches above it, and the dark Elf twisted his hand slightly, making them rotate in response. "And why should-"
"This is almost stale. We'd better make time, before we begin spellcraft, to talk about how to keep a kitchen. This is a travesty; I know driders who keep their feeding areas in better condition."
"Look, you've tried to kill me twice now," Eunice said with a frown. "Why should I trust you to teach me arcane spellwork?
"When did I ask you to trust me?" Again, the illusory script appeared just over Bahlzair's shoulder, and he looked over the other shoulder teasingly, with an uncomfortably pleasant smile. "And by the way, you may want to dissuade people from touching your door until I teach you the dispel."
"And when would that be?" Eunice complained. "I should scream for the guards right this minute."
"But you haven't yet, because you know that if you did, I'd be gone like a nightmare, leaving you to go to the lock up for enchanting your door with the express intent to harm, if not kill, whomever touched it." Bahlzair shrugged, his shoulder pushing through the illusory script and forcing it to fade more quickly. "I'm just as good at getting into the prisons as I am at getting out of them, and I can stay as long as I like without tipping anyone off. If you try to convince the guards that I've come to visit you in there, you'll be thrown in with the crazies for life, and you may never be rid of me. Now then, I'm going to start making some lunch- are you just going to stand there? It's easier for me to poison you when you're not watching me."
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