4 Jan 2019, 06:41
A Chilling Breakthrough
Godmod permission granted by Kae
Aoi wanted to spend some time with her sister. The stresses of the year had kept them to short meetings are they both tried to run their respective classes. Now with break arriving and less work to be done, Aoi decided a visit to Cypresse would be a welcome surprise. Aoi would bring not only her company but also her cooking in the form of Ressie’s favorite dish. 茶碗蒸し。Chawanmushi. A quick trip to the kitchens was called for to prepare this. Aoi was unsure if the House Elves could make the dish, as it was hardly typical UK fare, but that didn’t matter. It was more special if she made it anyway, allowing a personal touch to the dish that Aoi had made for Cy since Cy was a teenager. So about seven years total.
The click of the professor’s shoes echoed in the nearly empty kitchens. A single House Elf was sweeping up inside the room, briefly looking up to acknowledge Aoi. She smiled at him, raising her hand in a brief wave. “Hello sir, do you mind if I borrow the kitchen for a brief moment?”, she voiced with congeniality. The elf nodded silently and disapparated away with a loud crack. Aoi nodded and began moving rapidly to start cooking. Gathering the cookware took a few summoning spells in rapid order, while a basket she had carried down with her housed the ingredients for the meal. She removed each item from her wicker basket and lined them up in order of use. She had precut strips of chicken breast and deveined a few shrimp prior to arriving at the kitchen, so all they required at this point was a little seasoning. A few eggs, lily roots, ginkgo seeds, some pre-chopped mitsuba leaves, as well as some Dashi stock, Mirin, Sake, and Soy Sauce. Everything she would need to make a perfect dish for Cypresse.
With the aid of magic, Aoi was able to work quickly. She set out two separate bowls with a mix of the soy sauce and sake. In one she placed the chicken, the other the shrimp. The Kitchen was in a flurry of activity as ingredients floated to needed spots. The amount of concentration the Professor was exhibiting was staggering. As the meats soaked she blended the Dashi, Eggs, Soy Sauce, and Mirin together. A sieve made its way into her hand, promptly completing its role, as the mixture pushed through the fine metal. She placed four small ramekins out in a straight row before her. She carefully nestled the meats in each cup, then followed up with pouring the egg mixture over the ingredients in each bowl. A short steaming later and a little garnish of lily root, ginkgo seeds, and mitsuba leaves, resulted in Cy’s favorite dish, Chawanmushi. Now just to deliver it.
The woman moved out of the Kitchens, making her way through the often confusing and labyrinthine staircases and corridors of Hogwarts. She often wondered how many children were late to class as a result of this. Seemed like a poor design choice to her, especially in an environment where punctuality was essential. Hardly her choice though. The castle was old, designed long ago, though not as old as her Alma Mater. Remembering her own days in school she wondered how many possessions the school had swallowed. Aoi herself had lost more quills than she could count despite her neat and particular nature. No doubt some of the more careless pupils here had lost more than a simple quill. No matter, it wasn’t as if she would lose her dish on the journey to the sixth floor.
As she ascended to the landing of the sixth floor her eyes came to rest on a familiar student. One she had met earlier in the year. The boy whom she had named Kuro. He had been terrified of a spider, to which she came to his rescue. He had gone on about some disturbing implications about the school itself, before bolting away despite her attempts to bring him to reason. At this juncture, he didn’t appear to have improved from their last encounter. The large scarf he had been adorned with was missing, but that didn’t strike her as odd. Who would wear a scarf inside the school? It was mostly pointless. The boy was hunched down madly scribbling with a quill in a small journal. He seemed to be muttering various oddities, of which she couldn’t quite make out. She approached slowly, once again making her presence obvious, though she wasn’t sure if he would notice in his clearly manic state. Aoi was semi-relieved she didn’t need her wand to defend herself. She wanted to help this boy, but she was hardly naive to the capabilities of others, 11 or 12 years old or not.
She maintained a wide berth to come around him, before closing the distance with a frontal approach. It was the best chance for him to notice her if he hadn’t already. Aoi could see tears staining his face. Her empathy spiked, raising her nurturing spirit, which in turn fueled her desire to help Kuro. She knelt down in front of him, placing the food dish to her side before her hands came to rest gently on her knees. She straightened her back. Old habits die hard. She carefully modulated her voice, maintaining calm as she spoke in her clear London accent. “Greetings Kuro,” the echo of her quiet voice carrying through the hall slightly, “is there something the matter?” Her body braced for either a wall, or a flood, or emotion.
Sometimes, making the wrong choice is better than making no choice. You have the courage to go forward, that is rare.
7 Jan 2019, 09:27
A Chilling Breakthrough
Everything was fine. It was perfect, he was strong. He was more than strong. He was a rolling bank of fog, laced with poison and steel. He was a force, a predator. He had a name, a good name, a name that had more meaning to it than any other name he knew of. He needed nothing, no one. Walls fell before him, the stairs couldn’t hurt him anymore, he was too careful. He was brilliant, prepared, and scared. No, not scared. He was not scared, he was strong. Strong, powerful and alone. Not alone either, that was wrong. He didn’t need anyone, or anything. Especially not a scarf, especially not that scarf. He was fine.
But then, why did he feel like there was a sucking hole in his chest, why was he hunched over, feeling like his frame was going to collapse in on itself. Silent tears were dripping down his face, his fingers were flexing harder than they should, and he was terrified. Terrified of himself, of what was happening. A curse, a fiendish hex was to blame, and he knew it. It had nothing to do with his scarf, nothing at all. He was rational, he was strong. He would be dead if he wasn’t as powerful as he was, the lethal spell only causing a chasm to appear in his chest. It would pass, he would make it pass.
He knew he was lying to himself, somewhere. But he also somehow knew he had to. The boy couldn’t handle being weak, it would destroy who he was, and somewhere deep inside his mind, somehow, he knew it all too well. His hands refused to stand still, so he started to write, to scribble. It was going to be a present, he was going to be worth something, he was going to be helpful. A chronicler, a recorder and a scout. As a cowardly analyzer. But at least it would be something, he would do something.
Category: Professor
Name: Thursday
Threat level: 7
House: Unknown
Known Abilities: Able to stop motion, even in mid-air, presumed to have some sort of offensive spell to back this up.
Known Weaknesses: None, maybe physical force?
Side Notes: If this being has the ability to stop motion, perhaps it’s main attack is short-ranged? Immobilizing it’s victims before moving in for the kill. If this is the case, it’s probably a slow finishing blow, I.e a spider’s venom.
Encounters: 1
Frequency of appearance: Rare
Recommended Course of Action: Use flight at long distances to render it’s immobilization spell useless, taking care to never point your broom at this being. If it freezes you, the broom should take you out of harm’s way until the spell wears off. Use long-ranged attacks to wear it down. Never let it close the gap, ever. While not directly hostile, this being will pick off a student that annoys it, presumably to eat. We left before the results were made known.
There were a lot of scratched out mistakes, all the words being jotted down on one page, the other containing a rough sketch of a man, with the word ‘Thursday-astronomy’ underneath. All around were tiny notes. ‘Used right hand to immobilize victim’ was next to the hand, and next to the eyes was a not that read ’Yellow eyes, clearly predatory’. He was just sketching a close up of one of the eyes, when he heard a sound. His eyes, mostly black, only a little bit of white, tinged with an irritated red, still cowering in the corners, only visible because of how wide they opened upon realizing what was in front of them. The black moved, morphed, had no fixed shape. A living puddle of ink in each of his eyes, contrasting the whitish grey corpse-like skin that looked sallow and sick.
What was he supposed to do, aside from run, aside from try to survive, aside from fail. The boy may not have had anything backing him up, no real confidence. But he was not going to falter. He could hear her greet him, see her sit with her hands where he could see them, back straight, voice calm. He hated that voice. He knew what it was hiding. It hid malice, it hid death, it hid the very blackness of the dark place somewhere deep within, just like everything else. Or perhaps he didn’t hate her voice. Perhaps he only feared it, feared the intensity he knew it brought with it.
His finger flipped to a partially done page, and he glanced down before speaking quietly, scared and shaking, tears still flowing smoothly, although that didn’t seem to make his voice any louder than it always was. Her name had changed, he had changed it after that gaze. After he figured out what she was, what she had been trying to do. Owie was what someone weak said if they got a splinter. She was beyond that.
”N- name, Pain. Category, professor…”
He had to take a break, take a deep breath, before continuing. Almost challenging the figure in front of him with his words. He didn’t have much, he had enough.
”Threat level seven, seven out of ten. Abilities unknown, weaknesses unknown. One encounter. Recommended course of action, run. No other notes. I’m at least a seven, I am not going to die here. I’m going to survive, and… and kill death, or survive it. And then I’ll get a name, my very own name. No borrowed power. I’ll have a father, and a mother, and you’ll be dead. All of you, all of this. Dead.
His tear flow just seemed to speed up, and the boy could feel his vision going blurry. He wasn’t going to be able to win this fight. He wasn’t going to make it, but maybe if he gave it everything, if he actually gave it everything. The book dropped to the floor, flopping open to the page he had just been working on. One hand held his quill like a dagger, preparing to stab the danger with the brittle end. It wasn’t going to do anything but stain, but he wasn’t thinking straight. Not at all, not even a little bit. He never had much of a leash, never had a huge amount of control over himself. But now it was gone. Emotions, once thought to be a myth, were screaming and bubbling, contorting and bursting.
He had learned what they were here, at this very school. Had felt joy, had learned what he was missing. Had felt something other than sadness, something other than fear. And it had changed him, a lot. And now his hands were shaking, he could barely see, a death witch kneeled directly in front of him and he could almost feel control slipping. He didn’t feel it enough to try and stop it, even if he could. But he could feel something there, some presence covering far more than just his eyes. But through the tears, he did say something else, although it was fragmented. He had completed and started the sentence in his head, and it only broke him more.
”...Fens-born, Sc- Sca-...”
Shade-Beacon, Master of the Castle of Avarice