#kitsuneiisms

Bernie has had a hard time following exactly what was happening.

Azura had started to perform again but this time it felt...different. Bernie couldn’t place exactly what it was about it, but it felt like something rushed over her as Azura’s voice filled their cell.

And it didn’t seem constrained to their cell either. The...thing that kept watching them, he seemed to react strangely to it. Stiffening. Staring. Bernie hated when he came to check on them but this felt so much worse.

Lorenz...did something she couldn’t quite see, but Bernie did notice Ingrid shifting over to block him. For a split second, there was hope. Excitement. 

It...wobbled a bit as she noticed the monster moving again. He didn’t approach them like Bernie thought he would. He didn’t storm into their cell and attack Azura. He left instead, maybe after something more important, and Bernie let out a sigh.

And then the first burst of something rushed into their cell 

Bernie let out a terrified shriek as the first gush of...something shot past her neck from where she was leaning against the wall. She quickly scrambled away.

A mist quickly began to fill up their cell. “O-oh no! What are we-” Bernie coughed.

She squinted as her eyes began to water, looking over at her friends. Her head hurt. Whatever this gas was, it was clearly meant to take them down. Bernie struggled and gasped as her throat tickled, forcing her to cough again and again.

Her hands fell to the floor as she tried to hold herself up. Her arms shook under the weight.

She tried to lift her head to look at her friends. Everything was blurry. Bernie couldn’t tell if it was her eyes watering or...or...

Bernie fell over, and with a crack, her head the floor.

Reason +1 Starter for @kitsuneiisms

As an alumnus of the Fhrhdiad School of Sorcery, Lorenz had something of a vested interest in whatever the university published. It was seen as more of a specialist training school than anything else, second to Garreg Mach in general military preparedness but still a fundamental place of education for mages to refine their abilities. As the heir to the relic Thrysus that amplified combat magic, Lorenz’s father had naturally sent Lorenz to learn as much as he could before pushing on to the monastery.

Lorenz’s time in Fhirhdiad had been cut short by the unrest in the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. Yet, despite unable to officially finish his tutelage there and being fonder of the lusher fields of Leicester than the frigid north of Fodlan, he recalled his days there with respect and fondness.

Besides. This new theory they put forth was potentially meritorious. If one was best suited to a certain element, it would yield the most benefit to focus on said element. The same was true of any skill.

He lingered in the entryway to a classroom where a series of trials had been arranged around the perimeter of the room. A mage stood by the blazing fireplace as the obvious representation of fire, and others had their own displays of other magic such as miniature blizzard snowing into a bowl or a a ball of miasma being levitated by a dark mage, plague mask and all.

How exactly would anyone be able to test natural inclination in the first place? Lorenz paced to the center of the room, eyeing all six stations set up for students to take a gander at. He primarily knew fire and lightning Reason formulae, yet he didn’t feel a draw to anything at this range.

He turned at movement near him, someone familiar at his side. He nodded, focused but pleasant. “Ah, greetings, Selkie. Do you take any particular liking to a certain element? I can’t recall what you specialize in, if any. I myself use both fire and lightning.”

@kitsuneiisms​

They’re starting him off strong, huh.

Tibarn groans as he stretches his wings and glances at the food package he is supposed to carry through this mess of a place. When they said “we’re short staffed, so we might need you in the fray immediately”, he didn’t think that is what they meant.

Not going to lie, he may have expected a little more of this place he had heard so much about. This feels mildly unusual. But... perhaps he set his expectations too high. Nothing to be done about that, and he is not one to say no to a request for help. He’ll do it.

Though he is still near the entrance, he can feel the heat of the flames further down the road, which gives him an unpleasant flashback to the passage through the Kauku Caves. Though he supposes that he’s already braved the flames of hell once, he can do it again. At least this time, there’s less of a chance that he’ll have to face a big, stubborn old lizard once he’s through.

Just as he’s done dealing with those thoughts, a sound catches his attention and he turns to see the student picked to accompany him on this task - and he cannot help but raise his eyebrows in surprise. Hawks don’t have the best sense of scent among the laguz by any means, but he still has no doubt - this girl’s a shapeshifter... Though definitely not of a race he’s familiar with - the aura she gives off is completely new. And she has a pegasus and beorc weapons with her, so it looks like she has accepted and adapted to their ways. Definitely more flexible than him in this regard.

... Either way. “Hello there. Selkie, was it?” He recalls the name of the student that was given to him. “Nice to meet you. It looks like we’ve got to make it through here together for this mission.” He winces as he looks away from her and at the Valley. “Absolutely charming place, isn’t it.” They sure did not call it the Valley of Torment for nothing.

“Selkie!” There aren’t many at Garreg Mach who could match his boundless energy, let alone exceed it, but his fox-eared housemate is definitely one of those special few. “No; we don’t have these sorts of parties all the time, but that’s what makes each one special! Everyone has been waiting for this for a long time.”

He’s about to say more, but then Selkie seems to remember something. When she holds out her stamp card and ring, Caspar also realizes: He’d almost forgotten the same thing!

“Wanna trade stamps?” she asks.

There’s a thin, hazy sort of film over his eyes, or maybe it’s over the world, he can’t tell. There’s conversation around him too, the usual bustle of day to day life, conversations that sometimes clip to a halt as he passes, but it’s muted, like there’s water sitting upon his eardrums, a dull buzz.

Is it the Lance’s doing? Or the enormity of everything that comes with it? More expectation stacked upon him, the invisible ring of his crest clamped tight around his neck, a choke collar on a hound.

The only thing he really, truly registers is the awful, unending twitching, like a needy child, always after his attention. Sylvain isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do with it right now. It’s not like he can just toss something so important in his room and forget about it, especially with his father on the grounds somewhere. He doesn’t want to think about what would happen if he crossed paths with the Margrave without the thing in his hand.

On heavy feet, he drags himself to a secluded spot, around the side past the gates to the entrance hall, sets the Lance to rest against the wall, and slumps against it with a heavy sigh. He lifts a hand, near numb with how tight his grip on the weapon had been and fists it into his hair, the sting of it distracting from the scream he wants to let out. He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want any of this. What he wants is to crawl away somewhere and hope he just disappears, unchallenged, unnoticed, until everything just stops.

“-vain!”

A bitter laugh scratches in his throat. As if he’d be that lucky. He shifts, trying to change his stance into something casual rather than heavy, pinning a smile in place as he turns to find... Ah.

There’s the barest hint of a twitch of his lips, and his eyes flip down to the offered stick of Dango. He’s not proud of it, but there’s a reason they haven’t spoken since Almyra, and the hesitance in both her voice and posture as she says it tells him she might have already guessed as to why. His own shoulders go stiff, and he clenches his hand into a fist when he found his fingers instinctively extending towards the Lance.

There has to be a reason she’s still allowed to be here.

Elise knew Selkie was at the Academy but she still hadn't seen her friend yet. It was a shame too. She really missed the kitsune. No one was quite as enthusiastic or willing to play with her like Selkie was. Reuniting with her friend was a big reason for why she came here in the first place.

Kana had always been an easy sleeper. As a child, he was never plagued by nightmares—even during the war, he slept soundly through the night. Only a few times in his life has his rest been interrupted by a nightmare, and they only ever happened after a particularly traumatic event. The first time he ever took someone’s life; the first time he saw a loved one injured nearly to the point of death; the end of the war. Every time, he had a good reason to have his dreams tormented by monsters.

Not this time.

The monastery was a safe place, a secure location. He knew this. He saw the guards standing by every time he so much as left his dorm; he heard the discussions between the knights and the staff members during their off time; he sees how skilled his fellow students are with their weapons. He knows he’s safe.

But his mind likes to play tricks, it seems.

There are only flashes of tangible concepts: the horrified faces of his peers, the knights holding their weapons in trembling hands, the heavy tang of iron on his tongue, the disgusting scent of blood in the air. There’s a familiar tugging at his heart—the very same one that he felt in those few seconds before the first time he turned into a beast. It’s different than how it feels to turn with a dragonstone; more instinctive, animalistic.

Feral. 

Kana is awake before his mind can process it; he hears himself crying before he recognizes that he’s no longer asleep. Thrashing about wildly, his nails nearly rip through the sheets of his bed as his blankets are thrown off into forgotten corners of his room. 

“Mama! Mama! MAMA!”