The Blade and the Grindstone PV Closed

Kaegen did not think everyone else was happy. He thought they were stupid, he thought they lived in some world far beyond his own where things like happiness pretended to exist. They didn't live where he did, they merely occupied the same physical space. That was different, to him. They weren't real, not really. They were blips in the background. Only a few of those blips were monsters, stalking him, pretending to be someone from a different world.

He knew the death witches could walk his path, could see his world. He knew some of the professors could, and the others didn't care. He wasn't sure about anyone else. The fog knew, and the monsters knew. But did his friend? Did Soap-Eris still see what he did, or was she turning into some odd blip, some person living off in another world. Maybe that was why she left, maybe she was just... visiting. Saying hello to a place she hadn't set foot in for so long.

Soap-Eris tentatively suggest that if it died, he might die as well, but that was doubtful. He should be able to take out part of himself and not die. It was like taking off an arm or a leg, it might be a part of him, but if that limb outlived it's usefulness, he was fully prepared to remove it from the equation. Kaegen believed that death touched everything. That included thoughts, inanimate objects, and the hunger that roared within him.

But on the other hand, he trusted Soap-Eris, didn't he? Well, he did, mostly. He had never questioned her before, not even when it seemed to mean death for him. But he was feeling doubt creep around the edges of the gilded mental image of his friend. Like diseased moss over a flawless diamond. She
had been gone for so long, a whole year to slowly build that chasm. A whole year changed you, especially when you went from urchin living off of the streets to one of the richest purebloods in wizard society. Some dust and blood and dirt did a very poor job of covering that up.

The little ravenclaw made a split second decision, a decision to either trust his own intuition, or hers. It was close enough to be considered a coin toss, and yet it landed on himself. No, he didn't want to feed the hunger. He would wait it out, and see if it died, he was betting that he was stronger than the hunger, he was betting his sanity, and possibly even his continued existence in hogwarts on a hunch that was entirely and irrevocably incorrect. (flipped a coin)

"I'm going to wait a little longer. I can win."

Kaegen's arms relaxed as he backed away from the hug a little bit, scooting back to sit on his knees, studying this new Eris as closely as he could, intensely staring at her face. She asked if he still had the book, and he nodded. It seemed dumb in retrospect to still hold on to the pointless thing, but he didn't want to get rid of it. So much time had been poured into it's pages, so many hours spent following random students, writing down how he would kill them, writing down the weaknesses he could find, the cracks in every line of defense he could feel out with his dull, pointed claws.

"Yeah, I still have it. Never got a chance to throw it out, or I guess didn't want to."

When she asked about the castle, Kaegen had to take a second to think about what he was going to say, rocking back and forth for a few seconds as he partially closed his eyes. What was his castle? That was a good question. He had named it a castle, and then not bothered to really define that term. Why define a term he had invented, he knew all of it's nuances, just not how to convert those nuances to words.

"The invisible walls that keep everyone away. You can't see them, but they're there. If I walk to class, everyone else get there using a different corridor. They pretend that they wanted to go the other way anyway, sometimes they have an excuse, like an interesting painting. But I know. It's the castle, they don't like it."

He was slowly regaining more and more control, enough to actually contemplate answering her other question, the one he had ignored earlier, the one about why he had done what he had done. But he didn't want to tell Soap-Eris about that, he felt like it would be something she very strongly disproved of. Eris had always been the balance, a chaotic flame to be sure, but just stable enough to reign in Kaegen. But now he had a feeling that the stable side had grown, that she might be a bit harsher on his more savage reactions. It was nonsense, but it was a subconscious fear that had sprung up rather quickly. She smelled more like order than ever before, it was a shifting of energies.

Still, despite all that, right here and now, she was a friend. And she was a friend that looked muted. Her last words didn't sound like she wanted to talk, they sounded like she was cold. Or maybe that she felt small, he wasn't sure which one. He thought about reaching out and hugging her again, to maybe make her feel better, but they had just hugged, and it clearly hadn't helped her. His problems could wait, then. As they always did, and as they always would.

She felt like she was slipping off far away, like she was alone. She had found a different, dark world, or at least that was how he rationalized it. That was what the shudder meant, that was why she stared at nothing and tapped her foot. Turning to face the same wall, and scooting so he was about a foot away from his friend, Kaegen gave his best attempt at a fabricated shiver. He kept his face looking at the boring expanse of the study room's wood paneled walls as he gave reassurance in the only way he knew how.

"I'll join you."