April 11, 2024
Inverness Scotland, Near Hogsmeade
Midnight, Waxing Crescent, Thin Cloud Cover

Terrible Presence in Effect
| Aura of Unease Present |
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There is something that is just... not right about him. A chill in the air, a sense felt deep in the bones. The shadows might seem more lively, the night might play more tricks on his opponents' eyes. Yet there is one, undeniable truth -- the source is him.

It was evening, or no... nighttime, decidedly. Leonardo had just returned from fetching some potion ingredients, ingredients that he needed to simply stock up on because they were useful for a plethora of potions. Standard ingredient, sage, gillyweed, a bit of unicorn hair, frog's spawn, woodlice, beetle's eyes, the typical and among several other more rare types of ingredients that would be serving a special purpose in their own appointed times. When he had finished unpacking the substances from the parcels he had brought them home by, he pressed both hands on the counter and closed his eyes, heaving a heavy sigh. He felt his body slump forward a bit in exhaustion and the inklings of a headache were beginning to settle in. For once he was not intoxicated, nor was he in the least bit impaired. His mind was clear and he was thinking quite clearly, though what about he was unsure.

Leaving the ingredients where they were, the Seer instead slowly made his way to the living room with his face still in his hands. The night made the room shadowy and unclear, foggy at the edges and not entirely visible. Only a single wick lamp on the coffee table illuminated in a small ring in its vicinity the sitting room proper, and not much more. Leonardo was frustrated, though a ringing in his ears and a low noise echoing in his mind that had to be a voice was not clear enough for him to make out. His own lips were moving, he was replying--retorting--in a heightened manner. He was upset. Something had irritated him, something was irritating him and now he was properly exhausted with the conversation that he was now engaging in for what felt to be at least the tenth time.

He collapsed, dejectedly, into his settee. He had a book in hand. Red embers from the fireplace--it had been used recently by the looks of the soot around the flagstones--glowered like cat's eyes, with only a faint tongue of golden flame every other three seconds or so indicating that a crackling blaze had once been there to begin with. Eviana and Dante had visited, most likely. They had probably left as well, too. Macbeth was probably out on a nighttime flight, as he was apt to do. Ah that beloved owl...

Macbeth... oh, that was the name of the book in Leonardo's hand: Shakespeare's infamously unfortunate play. Where had Leonardo stopped reading it last? Wasn't he just short of but one of the famous killings in it? The death of Duncan himself, wasn't it...? Or was it Julius Caesar that he had been reading instead, with the soothsayer only just having given the warning to the doomed emperor...

Whatever it was that was vexing his mind, it was quite serious. He could not seem to put it aside for some reason. It was almost enough to cause him to fly to his feet in fury, but he did not much feel like doing as such, not when he could just as easily ignore it and take to his readings once more. Such a thing could be dealt with more rationally at a later time; this night of all nights was not the one to be bickering or otherwise engaging in the topic, especially not at this ungodly hour.

TW: Assassination via Blade, Ends at next Banner Break

Just about to express as much, a sharp, piercing pain suddenly ripped into his back in a puncture, something biting just between the scapula and the spine that immediately crippled the Seer with only a sharp cry to attest to the shock of the blow. Muscles contracted in pain, the Seer reflexively contorted into the bite and subsequently hissed through clenched teeth. Though there was a distant feeling to it as if it were a phantasm in the form of what he could only hope to be a dream, the pain was still present as if the moment were real--simply lucid dreaming could not explain away the intensity that caused him to fumble from his seated position, made the book to fall from his shocked fingers, and staggered him almost instantly to one knee.

Speak, hands, for me!

Even as he was drawing breath, trying to come to terms with the injury that had been inflicted upon him, from the darkness another blow pierced from behind in a higher place at his chest. The gasp that would have come was instead cut short by a catching of breath, his fingers fluttered to his mouth. In shock, in betrayed awe, he could not help but inspect his trembling fingers, the strange and macabre revelation that was only now starting to dawn on him and his numb rationale.

He was dying. Whatever this blade was, this terrible blow, it was intended to slaughter. It was intended to slaughter him.

Et tu, Brutè?—Then fall, Caesar...

His wand was gathered into his hand with a jerky motion do defend himself unconsciously, a spell that conjured white light came from it--what incantation used he could not be sure--but he could conjure no further words to speak after the single spell went wide and his wand was arcanely torn from his weakening hand. It was thrust into the dark and out of reach of trembling hands as another blow collapsed him completely to the ground. The Seer drew himself to his knees with a sudden motion, but a sudden blow with the butt of the knife to his face disrupted his balance and sent him sprawling onto his left shoulder and crashing to the ground.

Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!

As time stuttered in his eyes--the moments flashing incoherently in confusing figments of feeling, heartbeat, and flickers of vision--he did once try to block the blade as it plunged down, but there was nothing between him and the silver blade that hovered any longer--directly over his heart. Not a hand, not a spell, not a shield, not a wand. Somewhere, in the darkness uninvolved with the scene he was directly involved in, Leonardo swore that he could make out pale eyes; watching wide-eyed...

Run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets.

The way it gleamed, the way that the blade captured the light and the way that it reflected his own miserable visage; brows creased in curious wonder and surprise and pain all in one captured moment. Mouth slightly agape like a fish gasping for air.

Stoop, Romans, stoop,
And let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood
Up to the elbows and besmear our swords...

He was so far departed from his poise and composure that he carried with silent dignity and self-assurance...

...And, waving our red weapons o’er our heads,
Let’s all cry “Peace, freedom, and liberty!"

He had been stripped of all of these dignities and brought low in this finale of humbling humility in which a last thought was not that of considering what could be beyond--what was waiting after the final moment of life had passed--but rather infected with the panic and the misery of an animal writhing in a trap desperately clawing for precious seconds of remaining life. A miserable end.

A terrible end.

A poetic end.

At last, a fitting end for one the likes of him...

As the world finally spun and handed itself to the dark.

There was no final scream, no evocation or exclamation as darkness swooped in tailing the silver, after the searing flash of white that was accompanied with a high-pitched squeal in both of the ears of the man who had jerked suddenly awake and had nearly been prepared to raise arms against the Devil if he Himself had been the one who had been the cause of the nightmare he had awoken from. His brow was beaded with cold sweat, as was the rest of his form that was drenched in it; his heart pounded against his ribcage as if it were a creature desperately seeking escape, his breathing not only ragged but haggard and uneven as panic in the form of remaining adrenaline from a Sight that came without warning left its final traces in the frail human form of the Chiadovini. Wide silver eyes slowly had its spidery silver threads that once constricted pupil into infinitesimally small radius now relinquish their grip upon his sight, the world seemed to pulse and swirl with nebulae-like colors and currents as blood rushed to his head, that shrill sound above all... that shrill sound and the lobotomy-like pain that stabbed through his temple and curved into the frontal lobe of his brain.

Only when the world righted itself again, only when he could begin to make out the corners of familiar places in his bedroom, did Leonardo finally hold his breath and close his eyes before letting out a deep and pent up breath. Fear was exhaled along with stresses and anxieties of the things that he had Witnessed, all the way to the last whisper of his breath. His chest ached with two phantom impressions, his back tight with three clusters of pinched nerves...

All that Leonardo could do was stare numbly into the night, as he came to terms with these events acted out before their time. He was wise and experienced enough to know when a Vision had come to him, especially in that unpleasant form--in oneiromancy, as was his strange predisposition to experience them in. The dream's unpleasant nature, its strange form, the signs that had happened during it--the raven feathers, the content of the nature of his demise, the lucidity of it... was, despite the disgust that came with it as he considered the possibilities, something familiar to him; something very familiar to his family's legacy indeed. What he was unsure of, what he didn't know if he wished to know, was if the Vision had been of the nature of the infamously famous familial phenomenon of the commonly called "Swan Song" vision. A vision that possessed the name of the Chiadovini Corvo Canto.

Recorded only sporadically in Chiadovini history, the Corvo Canto was the rare occasion of a seer foretelling the method of their own deaths in advance of the determined time. Visions like this came anywhere from days to decades away from the defined event, and they featured intense and visceral visions and experiences of the seer's personal final moments. A broom accident, an animal attack, a duel gone awry, an assassination... all of these were events that had been carefully and curiously studied by the Chiadovinis that had survived those who had experienced and recorded such events. In all cases, all that had happened in their visions had been what had unfolded in reality--there were exactly ten known cases among the seers of the family, ten seers who had died anywhere from a few days to a few decades after receiving that dooming sight.

Because those sights were also in possession of having the unfortunately unblemished record of always coming true.

If this was the Corvo Canto, if his (hopefully) baseless suspicions were indeed true, he had just borne Witness to the means of his own demise, or at least the means of his demise should steps not be taken... or perhaps even if steps be taken. Alas, the bitter root of Oedipus, the foolhardy and useless attempts of man to stitch their own destinies when in reality they fell instead directly into the web of Her own design.

Leonardo took into his hands the empty bottle of Dreamless Sleep that he had taken before attempting to sleep, before he had had this nightmare. Evidently it had not been brewed strong enough... or perhaps the vision had been too persistent to be blockaded by such flimsy wizarding concoction. "Of all nights... in all ways..." Well there was no use in trying to sleep now. There was no perceivable way, at least to him, that he could possibly try to earn for himself a good night's rest while riled up in this way. "Accursed Sight, thou vexes me..." He growled, his hand closing on the bottle tightly before gently replacing it on his nightstand. "Perhaps you are only as real as the ghosts, but if as real as ghosts would that not mean you are indeed at least partially corporal even if unseen?"

His ability to distinguish the validity of the Sight, to even consider gifting to it the name of the infamous phenomenon, was... murky at best, but it had felt so real, it had been very, very real.

For the first time in years, a chill--a true, very real chill--danced its way down Leonardo' back accompanied by a visceral shiver. What remained in his mind was... how long? In that uncertain extent of days to decades, how long until its according fulfillment? What events, what surrounding signs and instances could possibly be the accompanying markers of the blossoming moments coming into being?

If he had the time for it still, would he not go to the place of his birth and breeding, the damned Chiadovini demesne and the seat of his family's power so that he could learn about such sights before it was too late? Could he even consider learning more about these sights beneficial to his cause, or was the action of doing so simply a stepping stone on the way to its eventual fulfillment?

Surely there been something that his ancestors had learned, something they had kept secret, that he could discover, that he could find, to illuminate this event? To determine if there was a way, perhaps something missed by those just imperceptive enough, to circumvent it.

There came a heavy impact against his window, which caused silver eyes to lock upon the source as those thoughts were suddenly scattered. By the time he had caught sight of the item, only a black mass lay motionless outside of his window. Upon closer inspection with an opening of the sash outwards, the Seer was presented with a deceased raven freshly killed by its unfortunate run-in with the window. Its neck had been broken almost instantly. Worse still... Leonardo recognized the poor bastard. It was one of the younger ravens in the flock that came around begging for food every now and again. "Malvolia?" He whispered down at the limp mass, slowly taking its small corpse into both hands and closing the window behind him. He had named the fellow 'Little Misfortune' by nature of his warped wing, which had always caused him to wobble and to never quite fly straight or with much control. Silver eyes creased lightly as he gently stroked the head feathers of the deceased corvid.

He was only one of the many in the mixed nature Unkindnesses and Murders that he fed regularly, but for some reason the presence of Malvolia--which had been rare and infrequent compared to others--somehow carried a charm and a sense of peace that Leonardo found admirable. The creature trusted him enough to draw close among its fellow corvids, which was much more than many other domesticated animals could bring themselves to do even with the allure of food in mind. With his help, the raven had grown rather large and healthily despite his disability... and had in the past--just as he had now in his stiffened claws--brought a pair of beautiful little shiny things with him. The poor creature's last delivery, the things that it had wanted to bring to the Seer in the middle of this night was a small silver woman's-sized ring with a tiny pearl set in it, and curled in the other claw was a small, normal muggle coin. A silver piece of British currency. A ten pence, if Leonardo remembered his muggle currencies rightly.

Gently prying the items from the talons, Leonardo held them in his open palm for a few moments in consideration before gently placing them on the nightstand alongside the empty bottle of Dreamless Sleep. "Ohhh... Malvolia..." He said softly, closing the wings of the bird gently and arranging it into a 'peaceful' poise. He would bury the critter tomorrow, probably a few feet into the woods, but for tonight the innocent bird could stay inside. It could stay inside and in a small, empty box to keep it out of sight and out of the morbid observations of anyone who could potentially judge should they come before the funeral. It would have to be tomorrow, then...

Calmed enough now to soothe his anxieties further, Leonardo did as he was apt to do and tried to make himself presentable after such abundant shake-ups in too short of a time. Yet, as he cleaned his hands of the blood from holding the body of Malvolia--throat raw still in the light of the Sight's aftereffects on his frail body as he washed an unpleasant iron aftertaste from his tongue and mouth with tap water--Leonardo hazarded a glance at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror to behold his pallid visage. It took him a moment to realize that it was new, now. Something different, something additional to his former appearance that had not been there the night before the sleep and the dream.

As if in a dreamlike state, thin fingers lingered on a forelock of his hair that was long and would have normally been permitted to simply remain framing his face. Once, it had been totally raven black, glossy and gleaming in the light. Silver eyes only watched his own fingers slowly curl it around his fingers, as if trying to determine if it was indeed real and not a figment of a mind still half-dreaming. The thickest hairs at the base had turned a shocking platinum white. The roots themselves had been transmuted in color... permanent alteration by nature of something the Chiadovini was all too familiar with. It was the same shade of white as so many other strands of his hair at the temple, hairs that he had covered up and hidden from sight as they were the consequences of Sight itself.

Retrieving his wand quickly, the Seer pressed the tip of the chestnut wand to the errant white, the marker, the sign... The words fluttered on his lips, the words that were simple to speak and easy to cast... His lips moved in a soundless 'Crinus muto...' but no words were spoken...

After a few moments of internal battle... he lowered his wand and shook his head, only running his fingers through the new mark. "No." He said softly, shaking his head. "No. Do I not have enough hidden markers of shame as is? Let this one be seen. At least this one..." His thin fingers once again turned the white and permanent mark between fingertips. "At least in some circles, such a mark is respectable. Natural, even."

His brow creased as he attempted to rationalize his own thoughts. "The curses attached to it need not be known, will not be shared. All that they need know is that the Chiadovini heir has reclaimed his inheritance. Has claimed his powers once more."

He straightened, tipping his head with a sigh as he fixed his own dead eyes with a grim stare. He nodded slowly. "Yes." A ghostly, haunting smile formed, which caused silver eyes to glow with mirthless amusement. "Mister Chiadovini, indeed."

His lips twitched upwards in repressed disgust for but a moment--indeed in the back of his mind there was the feeble and fragmentary impression of a harsh and cruel man that he knew so well, that he had come to loathe and that he had avowed to never become--and then he was off. Off to remain awake for the rest of the night. He would not be able to sleep anymore tonight.

There was much more important work to do.

Reducio

Statistics & Abilities

----- Stamina 5 Strength 0 Evasion 9 Wisdom 15 Accuracy 14 Arcane Power 17 -----

Seer (Intuition) Fearless Seer (Prophesy; 0/1) Advanced Casting Seer (Indiscriminate Knowledge) Terrible Presence Seer (Fate Spinning; 3/3) Spell Spread