Renown | [Career] [Solo] [Fin] - Elsewhere…

30 Jun 2025, 21:50

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.

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It had been slow, surely, but it had been steady. Where when he had first started this venture around this time the last year in which he had only received one or two interests every few days to a week or so, now he was finding that his hours of operation were starting to be filled up swifter and swifter. Word had gone out, and while his reputation had no more improved nor lessened (as there was still particular fear of the strange hermit of the Hogsmeade forest that still remained and would likely never come to be quelled), the rumors that some had heard first through word of mouth and now through further prattling and gossip fueled as well by the incredible newspaper-driven stories... had been true.

The tales that the Chiadovini heir--nay, the Chiadovini house--had reared its head once more was indeed true. Its name would not go so quickly to the grave as its previous patriarch had, and as the new patriarch was seemingly primed to take position, those titterings and gossip now turned to supposing and predicting: how great, and how pertinent, would this new son be in this new era for the lineage? For the Wizarding World, for that matter? For two decades since the Second War, after all, the branches had withered and the leaves had entered into an autumnal death: it had been long-thought that the family would die. Worse still, it had been thought that the last son had not inherited the Eye at all; the family's finest stock and produce spoilt in that final generation.

Now, Leonardo had put both concerns at ease and inspired a slew of further intrigue in its stead as he had performed readings in leaves, residues, and dream-interpretations. Scryings and gazings had on more than one occasion later been purported to have come true just as he had alluded to when he had first predicted or interpreted them. Indeed, a precious few had somehow managed to pull a minor prophesy themselves from his lips at the cost of a painful full-body contortion that was the price of prophetic foresight. While they had eventually proven to be ultimately harmless, he had started taking to protecting against their sudden onsets with a draught in a concealed place to assist him in a recovery just in case such malaise suddenly overcame him. He had never appreciated the dangers of Sight, and loathed every instance in which he felt paralysis threatening on seize overtake his body entirely. Once totally onyx-black hair was slightly peppering due to those glimpses through the veil, though its fullest extent was hidden in the most internal layers imperceptible to the outside eye and therefore only fully seen if he was careless enough to brush away errant parts or if it somehow was sent into a state of disarray.

He had watched the mirror over the course of this unsettling minor transformation with uneasiness--even as he had performed his arts for those that knew well enough to pay him for those services. Perhaps it was because he was too aware of his own mortality and that if he had known himself not to be afflicted with such talent he could have happily waved such changes off as being a marker of old age. Perhaps if they had been a mark of his mortality he could find in those silvery stains a sort of wisdom to construe for his own. But he saw, in these transformations, an eerie reminder. It was the evident mark of father to son, and father to son before him, and he as father to his own son. It could not be stopped.

It would not allow itself to be stopped.

It, just as much as the family, refused to die.

All of this had culminated most finally into a singularity of a realization. He could not deny it any longer, nor could he hide from it: from the people, from the Eyes. His time of living as a hermit had, as it seemed, finally come to an end. His name, for as long as he had tried to keep it away from lips, tongues, and quills, was now being etched in minds and papers among many and for many. The Chiadovini, like the Firebird in the hands of Prince Ivan, was now a prize to be caught and coveted once again. And, if it was not kind enough to grant to those who had avarice for its magic and plumage, then they would surely instead elect to take it by force.

He could not keep his gifts hidden, could not prevent his name from spreading out of control to those that would hear and know it. As much as he wished to remain hidden, a hermit among the wizards that could handle and manage such attentions and intrigue, doing so was simply no longer an option. Scandal had taken him to its bosom, and it seemed that it was loathe to release him at any moment soon.

So, it was best to set the current and misconstrued records straight. To finally come out of the darkness and into the light where all could be exposed and yet finally put to rest. The invitations he had ignored, the prospective interviews he had turned aside for so long, he finally let them come. He let the jackals into his home, and he let them question as well as interrogate.

No, he would no longer be offering fortune-telling services outside of extraneous situation.

Yes, he was planning to move his career forwards; and yes, that meant that if there was a notable prophecy it would be handled accordingly (though admittedly even to their knowledge and his own he had never seemed to have an exceptional vision before in comparison to many of his ancestors).

No, he would not be following in the footsteps of his father. There was a particular rigidness in the way that he had spoken concerning that particular matter that seemed silently agreed-upon not to pursue at that particular moment. He was, instead of taking on the difficult mantle of a Naming Seer as several of his recent family had, intending to pursue his specialization of Astronomy in the form of Astrology. It seemed to him that the area needed only a little more attention paid to it and that he did not anticipate his own work to be spectacular by any means.

And all of this left him drained, as he had neatly avoided conversation of Eviana and Dante altogether. Eviana would, of course, most likely be handling further follow-ups on her own time, something she was much better suited-for than he.

So when all was quiet, and stars winked quietly overhead, he looked up and away from his two trembling and pallid hands and instead to the heavens with wide and pale eyes. Those old motes of fire and fusion, his first playmates and sources of first admiration. Had he not watched them just as surely as they--inanimate they were--had watched him over the course of his life? He searched for those comrades: Perseus and Andromeda, Ursa Major and Minor, great Pegasus and Draco, Cygnus, Heracles. They looked different this far north than what he had seen while raised in the Demesne, their angles different and indeed some on the horizon and below it being concealed from his eyes... but they were still there. Through all, they were there.

And wasn't it a frightening thing, to think that some of them were burnt out or about to die someday. Perhaps some had already gone cold, though he could see them waver and blink slightly as they fought for fuel and heat. Their millennia-long battle for mere existence, a hunger to survive, a purpose to blaze and fester... The fruitlessness of it all as millennia upon millennia after he no longer cursed this world with a physical body they too would finally exhale their last and crumple into themselves in a bravado of solar wind and radiation or would simply collapse and burn cold and bright as they fought feebly on the food that came after their crisis--like cells forced beyond their own crisis into metastasis. How much more would they see than he could ever dream of?

Who would See after he was gone? What legacy would he leave behind if it could not be light or a celestial marvel the likes of the great tapestry overhead?

And perhaps it was with those thoughts in mind that he had made the decisions that he had made in the past year. He had a purpose beyond himself now, in the form of the boy, and the thought was cowing. And what was more perturbing was the sight of a meteorite that streaked crimson across the orange-scarlet corona of the sun that had never fully set on that night. Danger. It seemed to whisper, the warning keening in his mind trained to observe and seek out the infinitesimal in pursuit of the integral. Your destiny is not your own anymore. Someone else enters.

He was uneasy. The tail of the small streak had seemed to split, a small fork of rouge and white. Together, and then gone as soon as observed as the celestial fragment dissolved in the unforgiving atmosphere. A connection between you, closer than you think. From within your own house: family. A shared family.

He had learned quickly in his life to never overlook the little and inconsistent things. Overlooking them meant that you were dismissing a piece of the image that could well prove to be the most integral to understanding the purpose of it all: the thing that could very well be the separation between understanding and failing. While his actions were often difficult to understand the meaning of in and of themselves, Leonardo could never deny that all that he had done and all that he refused to do was due to the fact that there was something imperceptible that he had sensed and recognized as a lodestone in the myriad of webbing trails that spewed in all ways from all who were victims of Fate's touch.

It had been through these little things that he had avoided the worst of his father's hand, the dark shadow that he had seen at the corner of his visions and the foul contingency that seemed to lurk in wait for the slip, for the stumble.

What would have happened if he had not done all in his power to refuse that inkling was something that he as a Seer was not privy to anymore. The time at which its handiwork would have been most consequential had passed decades ago, though now and again did it like to flirt with his insecurities and doubts.

But it had returned now, and for what reason exactly the man simply could not say. All that he knew was that where it lingered there lay certain tribulations and consequences. Consequences that he did not feel fully apt to explore even for all of its allure and temptations.

Where the darkest root twisted, it was there that he had to go. Back to the pits, the very primeval sludge from which the family tree had been grown. With Rachelle's words never having departed from him, indeed the inconsequential elevating itself to the level of undeniable, it was time for action. There had been a sign, and did not Leonardo make his living in such signs?

In a swirl of black and silver, he was already making ready to depart. It would be the fifth time in a matter of only a few years that he visited Italy on important errand. Yet, it seemed that on every venture to his motherland some new and terrible revelation was foisted upon him--one that if he had tried to ignore he would have most certainly been worse-off for in the end.

Perhaps, with the way of the world and the way that things had been panning out for him thus far concerning such traveling and trivial matters, he should start making a tradition of it.

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Reducio

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Statistics & Abilities

Stamina 5 ⬥ Strength 0 ⬥ Evasion 9 ⬥ Wisdom 15 ⬥ Accuracy 14 ⬥ Arcane Power 17
Seer ⬥ Fearless ⬥ Advanced Casting ⬥ Terrible Presence ⬥ Spell Spread ⬥ Crucio

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Seer

⬥ Uncanny Insight ~ 10% Auto-Dodge & Auto-Hit Rate
⬥ Prophesy ~ Vision Occurrence Chance 1ce/Thread (1/1)
⬥ Indiscriminate Knowledge ~ No Critical Failure Chance & +1 Critical Success Range
⬥ Fatespinning ~ Reroll an Ability Check 3ce/Thread (3/3)

Fearless ~ Immunity to Fear Effects, Spells, and Potions

Advanced Casting ~ +1 Critical Success Range while Casting Spells

Terrible Presence ~ Aura of +1 Critical Failure and 10% Automiss & Damage Reduction

Spell Spread ~ +2 Wisdom DC, +1 Critical Failure Range, -2 Accuracy, +1 Target

Crucio ~ Capability of Casting the Unforgivable Torturing Curse

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2,017 words

⟣𝙱𝚢 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚛𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚘𝚏 𝚖𝚢 𝚝𝚑𝚞𝚖𝚋𝚜, / 𝚂𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚜⟢

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