#phyrea

As the huddled civilians exclaim in relief, Tiaathque looks out past the ward at Phyrea, wounded and battered herself, with an arrow in her shoulder and another in her thigh, bleeding from wounds where others had either been pulled free or not pierced deep enough to hold. She's grinning, regardless, as she always does in battle, holding up hands wreathed in flame. Tiaathque knows from the little movements of her hands which spell she's casting, that she's committing to her own big push, and that it will be enough to finish off the last of the archers.

They shoot again before Phyrea can get that spell off, though. Tiaathque braces herself, ready to dip into her personal resolves to bolster the ward one final time--but it's not her, or the civilians around her, that they're aiming at this time. Eight arrows pierce Phyrea all at once, their shafts lighting up immediately as a cascade of flame pours out of her, mantles around her in reaction. Phyrea staggers, but the mantle keeps her upright. Tiaathque breathes out in relief.

Which leaves her without the breath to scream as, a moment later, the ninth arrow arcs through the air, striking Phyrea cleanly in the throat and dropping her to the ground.

By the time her gasp has filled her lungs again, Tiaathque is beyond the urge to scream her lover's name. She simply turns to the civilians sheltering behind her and tells them, pointing the way they'd been going before this all began, a way far too open to traverse with archers in play, "Run."

"But they-"

"Run," she says again, drawing herself up to her full height. That still only puts her at the protesting woman's chin, but there must be something in her face, or the way her grip tightens on her staff, that's more convincing, because the woman pales, and nods, and turns away, shouting encouragement at the rest of the huddled figures. Tiaathque sees them start to move.

That's enough. She turns back towards the archers, striding forward. There's a black pearl set into one of her bracelets, which she's working down her wrist as she walks. It's meant for a tamer spell, but she'd made sure, when she got it, to get one that would work for grander purposes as well. None of the archers shoot towards her, or past her, though they all have arrows nocked. Her ward, pale and translucent, shimmers around her still; maybe they don't know enough of magic to know that it's nearly spent. Or maybe, because she hasn't attacked throughout this whole encounter, they don't think that she will.

"Drop your staff and put your hands up, elf," their captain shouts a moment later, confirming that idle suspicion. "Lord Darrancy will give you a fair trial if you surrender."

She doesn't look down at Phyrea's body as she comes up beside her. She can't bear to. She only looks at the soldiers, stretches out her staff, and reaches down deep into herself, into the reserves of personal energy that she'd just been thinking it was unwise to spend. It doesn't matter now, does it? She spreads her fingers wide in the patterns of the spell, and her voice rises and falls in the tonal component, the words fitting oddly to the specific notes that it requires.

"As he gave the serfs you hung for hiding grain to feed their families a fair trial?" It's what Phyrea would have said, and since she can't, Tiaathque would say it for her. "You wrote your fate when you shot at frightened children and their parents, and if you think killing Phyrea would undo it, you were *wrong*."

The civilians should be far enough away by now, and if they aren't, that's their fault. Tiaathque holds the spell as she takes another step forward, her eyes fixed on the captain, who stands in the shadows of a rocky overhang. Her step takes her into the shadows of a tree, and she flashes from one the other, so that suddenly she's amid the archers. They startle away, and bows come swinging around to point at her. Too late. With a twist of her wrist, Tiaathque presses the silver bangle into the wood of her staff, crushes the pearl between the two forces.

Power rises out of her, wrenches out from within. She gives it everything she can, pours as much of her life into the spell as she can before base instinct, which hasn't realized yet what has happened, rises up to prevent her giving the whole of it. Why not? It doesn't matter if it kills her. Or if the archers kill her, if she fails. Phyrea is already dead.

But she's too well-trained not to resist giving every last drop. She still sways on her feet, overcome with exhaustion, as the magic flows out of her. Negative energy, the sweet familiar slow molasses flow, pours forth all around her. It doesn't look like much, just a wavering in the air, a faint shadow tinting the cold grey light filtering down from the overcast sky. But all around her, the archers double over, screaming, as their veins bulge black and their skin shrivels and peels. Their muscles rot on their still-living frames, years of entropy washing over them at once. One by one they fall to the ground, screams silenced, decomposed straight into death.

Looking around at them, Tiaathque can't even feel satisfaction, just a dull sorrow. She staggers back towards Phyrea, drops to her knees, and pulls Phyrea's still head into her lap. The flames are gone, burnt out; just the white curls of her hair remain, like ashes on a fire. Tiaathque runs her fingers through them.

Phyrea's fires had burnt away the shaft and feathers of the arrow that killed her, leaving only a deep gash along the side of her neck where the blade had struck. Tiaathque reaches towards it, presses it against the blood still leak weakly out, and freezes as she feels a fresh pulse flow over her fingers. *Dead hearts don't beat.* Not unless something magical has happened that she surely would have noticed.

A moment later, Phyrea blinks her eyes open, batting irritably at her hand. "Don't poke it, Tia," she whispers hoarsely. Her yellow eyes go wide. "Are you crying?"

"I- no." Tiaathque blinks when she says it, though, and for the first time feels the wet on her cheeks, the prickling burn in her eyes. "I thought you were dead!"

"I thought so too," Phyrea says, still hoarse-voiced, and starts to lurch upwards, though Tiaathque stops her easily with a hand on her shoulder. "The archers, the *people*-"

"The archers are dead," Tiaathque says, somehow, though her throat is suddenly so tight, her voice so thick, that she's amazed that she can. It's as if the grief was on a delay, catching up only now that she knows it's unneeded. "The villagers went on ahead of us. They should be safely across the border now."

"Good." Phyrea sinks back into her lap. "You look like as shit as I feel, Tia. Got rough once I was down?"

"You have no idea," Tiaathque says, and then bows her head and buries her face in her hands and starts to sob.

"Tia? Tia?" Phyrea wriggles out of her lap at last, without Tiaathque fighting her, and rises up to drape against her, arm around her shoulders. "It's all right, Tia. I know you hate hurting people, but it was for a good cause. You did a good job. You don't have to feel bad about it."

10. Fluff - “Stop moving and let me braid your hair.”

"Tiaaaaa," Phyrea said, her voice rising not quite to a whine. "Stop moving and let me braid your hair."

"I'm not moving," Tiaathque said, laughing, and turned back to look at Phyrea sitting behind her in the rocking cart. "Not that much. You're still drunk?"

"I'm not drunk, I'm just tipsy," Phyrea said, glowering back. "And you are moving. You moved just now. I'm not going to mess it up, I promise. I braided my siblings' hair all the time back home."

Tiaathque leaned in, intrigued. Phyrea spoke rarely about her family--she'd admitted that she was afraid of them being held accountable for her misadventures, despite how far away they dwelled. She didn't even use her real name, to avoid that. Tiaathque knew it, by now, but she held it secret, to honor the trust that Phyrea had showed her in giving it in the first place. All she really knew was that Phyrea hadn't been raised by her birth father, and that she had very many siblings, most adopted.

"Do some of them have hair like yours? It must braid very differently when it's long."

Phyrea reached up and touched her tight, springy white curls, her hand passing harmlessly through the flames that flickered above them, making them look like white ashes at the foot of a fire. She kept her hair trimmed very close, saying it helped control the flames. When it grew longer, apparently, the flames grew too, despite not actually using it as fuel.

"It does. And some of them do. I have three half-siblings by blood, with the same hair, and some of the other human-blooded kids have it too. This is just how human hair is, up north where I come from. But some of my siblings are elf-blooded, and my party dad has straight elfy hair, like yours. So I know how to braid both kinds, and he showed me some fancy braids. I could make your hair so pretty."

"We're heading back to the inn for bed," Tiaathque reminded her. "I don't need fancy, I just need to keep it straight until morning. You've said your blood father was an efrit. Is your elven father married to your mother?"

"Nah. Well, yes, he's married to my blood mom, and also to my dragon mom, and my axe dad, and some people get weird about that- you're not going to get weird about it, are you?"

She looked so anxious that, even though Tiaathque was still trying to wrap her head around that description, she only said, "Of course not. Your... dragon mom?"

"Yeah! She's a dragonborn, sorry, I know that's confusing. Just, you know, you can't just say 'Mom,' and I guess they tried, like, Papa and Dad, but it just didn't work. So, dragon mom." Phyrea shrugged, then reached out, snatching at Tiaathque's hair. "I'll braid it not fancy, then. Please?"

It probably wasn't fair to pry more information out of her while she was drunk, anyway. Smiling, Tiaathque turned around, scooting back so that Phyrea could reach her hair more easily. "Go ahead. We'll get to bed faster that way when we get to the inn."

"Oh, good, if we get to bed faster, I can-"

Quickly calculating her chances of successfully managing to turn around and physically muffle Phyrea before the cart-driver got an earful, Tiaathque elected to drop a Silence spell around them instead. Even with the spell, she could feel Phyrea's laughter behind her, making her hands shake in Tiaathque's hair. Tiaathque drew herself up, gathered as much composure as she could manage, and kept the Silence spell up all the way to the inn, despite the distraction of Phyrea's surprisingly gentle fingers in her hair.

---

20. General - “Is that vodka? At 7 in the morning?”

"Is that vodka? At seven in the morning?"

Melivaris' voice was gentle, not the harsh disapproval that Eva couldn't help but brace herself for. She'd known he wasn't the Marquess, whose step was heavy and dragged with his limp, but it was habit, at this point, to tense for the old man's disapproval.

Instead of answering aloud, she held up the bottle, turning it so he could see the label.

He took it deftly from her grip, slipping it loose from her hand even though she'd had no intention of giving it up. Eva looked up from where she was hunched over the table. He was examining it closely, his ears pricked, his brow faintly furrowed. He frowned more deeply when he set it down on the table it looked up. Still no disapproval, though, only concern.

That made her feel more guilty than the Marquess' disapproval would have. She was used to pushing back against that. Melivaris seemed to be sincerely worried about her untimely drinking.

"I got a letter," she said, because she couldn't stay silent in the face of his penetrating concern.

"A troublesome one?" Melivaris pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. "If it's from anyone you've dealt with, you know that the Marquess will deal with it. You're his best agent."

She could try rebuffing him, but it was obvious that he wouldn't go away. And Eva didn't really want him to. Whatever services she might do for the family, Melivaris was her only true ally here. The Marquess' daughter believed very sincerely that she was indeed a bastard half-sister, and treated her accordingly, as a tolerated but inferior relative; the Marquess himself had made it clear that he would never entirely forgive her deception. Only Melivaris, with his elven sensibilities and his lack of association with the family, seemed to feel any affection for her. He might even sympathize.

"No." She shook her head. "It was from my father- well, there was a letter from my father enclosed. But it was from the jail he'd landed in."

"I hadn't been aware that he'd been jailed," Melivaris said, with his customary delicacy around the subject of either of her parents. "Not that I was entitled to know."

"I didn't know either," Eva said. "Not until the letter arrived. He hasn't contacted me since he sent me here. I think he got well out of dodge once it went public that the Marquess had accepted me as his grandchild. He was trying not to fuck it up for me."

She sighed. Everything had gone wrong, sure, but it hadn't been his fault. And even if he had been around, he wouldn't have been able to rescue her. Eva had saved herself, with her own talents, and he'd helped her hone those. It wasn't fair to hold any of that against him.

Melivaris only nodded. He had always seemed to approve, in a quiet way that wouldn't attract the Marquess' wrath, of her father's plot to give her a better life. It was one of the things she appreciated about him. Along with the music lessons, of course.

"Anyway, I can tell when a letter's written under duress. It was addressed to me as the heir, so he has no idea I got disowned, which is the only silver lining. And the jailors didn't even try to dissemble. They want money for his upkeep, and they want to squeeze it out of me. Instead he goes into 'the Pit,' and I guess the jailors assume I know what that means."

"It's an evocative name."

"Yeah." Eva poured herself another shot of vodka and tossed it back. "And he wouldn't ever have given up where I was willingly. So either torture, or magic, and I doubt it's magic as nice as what you're teaching me. Not if they have someplace called the Pit. But it's not like I can pay them off."

"Why not?" Melivaris raised an eyebrow. "I can understand why you wouldn't want to tell the Marquess about this, but you do get paid your own salary, don't you?"

"They want two thousand gold. For a year."

"Ah." Melivaris was already very pale, all blue-tinged--'winter-hued,' he called it--but he went paler. A little ashy. "Perhaps... you should apply to the Marquess, after all."

"No," Eva said firmly. "That's blatant extortion, and the d'Arqua business doesn't pay extortioners. Better twice as much for security to make our position clear then half as much as a pay-off, because once they know they can shake you down, they'll just keep upping the price. That's the principle the old man taught me. I can't ask him to break it, and I wouldn't if I could."

"Evangeline." Melivaris reached out across the table, laying a hand gently over hers as she reached for the bottle. "I understand that you're reluctant to ask him for help. But the worst that can happen is that he'll say no."

"The worst that can happen is that he'll realize I'm exposing a weakness, and doubt my integrity as an investigator," Eva countered. "Or tell me to forget my father, and if he says that to my face, it's not going to go well. Besides, all that aside, he's right. I pay them two thousand gold this year, it'll be three thousand the next."

"But you can't do nothing," Melivaris said. Gentle, not shocked; she was sure that between the vodka and his innate perceptiveness, he'd already read it in her face.

"I can't," Eva agreed. "He's my father. He did everything he could do to make my life better, and walking away, off to wherever he landed in jail, is part of it. So I need a favor from you."

"Whatever you need."

"Tell the old man I need to go on a leave of absence, for my bardic training. Call it... a journeyman period, or something like that. He knows what you've been teaching me makes me more useful to him. Convince him I need it to hone my skills, and he'll give me as much time as I say I need."

Melivaris nodded, and he gently squeezed her hand. "Of course. Something like that would actually have come up sooner rather than later. I meant to wait a few more years, but my timeline was based on elven training, in any case, so this isn't too soon. I can even draw you up the training plan I would have sent you with. Though I assume that's not all you'll be doing?"

"Nope." Eva summoned a smile for him, trying to pack as much genuine gratitude into it as possible, alongside the weariness and the fear. "I'm going to break my father out."

---

30. Angst - “I risked my life for you.”

"I risked my life for you!" Myerzo didn't mean to say it, but that agonized cry tore itself unbidden from his throat, and once it was loose, he couldn't take it back. "My life, my reputation, my place in the Order, to get you out of there, and you turned around and went back?!"

He saw Cirion stumble back along the narrow bridge he was guarding, eyes going wide, lowering his sword. Myerzo wanted to shout at him for that, too, actually had to bite back the instinct. It wasn't as if it would be any use; Cirion had always treated that light little rapier like a toy, waved it around without any care for his stance or his guard. He'd always assumed Myerzo would be there to fill in any holes in his defense.

Not that he was wrong. Myerzo felt fresh ire bubble up in his chest, and had to swallow hard to hold it back. He'd done just that, hadn't he? Jumped in to hide Cirion's crimes and protect him from punishment, regardless of what consequences he might face? And Cirion hadn't even thought about trying to undo it all and plunge himself into danger again.

"There were still people in there," Cirion said, eyes wide, painfully earnest. "Innocent people. They hadn't meant any harm, they just didn't know how the Blackthorn worked when they went into it. I couldn't just leave them there!"

"Yes," Myzero said, leveling out his tone. The rage bubbling through him, denied further voice, felt like it was spreading out through his chest, settling like hot metal into his bones. "You could have. You should have. You were only in the Blackthorn for less than a day, and I still took a risk bringing you out. For all you knew, they slept in there."

"We did," said a woman on the far side of the ravine, one of the ragged group of travellers huddled around the tiny fire that they'd started.

He glanced back at her, distressed and pleading. "Don't tell him that! Just don't- let me handle him, okay?"

Myerzo took a step forward, shifting into an offensive stance, raising his sword high. "Cirion-"

"You're right!" Cirion swung back towards him, sword half-raised, though he wasn't situated right for a proper parry even if his rapier wasn't far too light to deflect Myzero's heavy blade. "You're right, you took a risk bringing me out. For all you know, I'm corrupted. And for all you know, they aren't. If you're so determined that they should die just on the chance of it, then you should kill me too!"

"This is the law!" Myerzo burst out, not quite a shout this time, but still too loudly to sound as implacable and even-toned as he'd wanted. "No one who has passed through the Blackthorn is safe, and it's a knight's duty to put down any who escapes. I shouldn't spare you, no, but I am going to, for your father's sake."

Because it was his duty to protect Cirion, no matter what the lute-strumming idiot did. He didn't regret that, couldn't regret it, even knowing that he was betraying his own oaths of knighthood to do it. That didn't make him any less furious that Cirion had forced him into that betrayal. And was forcing him now into another--because he had sworn, in his heart and to his lord, to serve Cirion as faithfully as he served his lord and his order.

This was the only compromise Myzero could make for himself. Spare Cirion, against the laws of the land; kill the rest of them, against Cirion's wishes. He would not choose one oath over the other, and so he would break both of them.

"The law isn't fair!" Cirion protested. "You know that, or you wouldn't try to say I'm exempt from it. Either you don't believe in it, and you should spare them, or you do believe in it, and you should kill me too. I'm not any more important then they are."

Myerzo ground his teeth at that. It was a foolish thing to say, even for someone as prone to foolishness as Cirion--whatever he might want, he knew better. He was his mother's son, to the public who adored his mother's memory, and his father's son, to those loyal to his father. He could say whatever humble things he liked, but he was an important man by any measure. And Myerzo would trade every one of that travelling band he'd rescued to keep him alive.

"It doesn't matter if I believe in the law or not," Myerzo said. "I'm a knight of the Iron Shield, and my duty is to obey it."

"The Order of the Iron Shield is supposed to protect the weak, not kill them!" Cirion protested. "That's why Father gave you to it!"

It took effort not to flinch. He was right, and Myerzo knew it. The first time he'd ever seen that emblem emblazoned on a shield, it had been his lord's, sweeping towards him as the man used his shield-arm to scoop him protectively up out of the flames around him and into his saddle.

But his shield was meant to protect one person among all others. "I'm protecting all the innocents of this land who might be hurt, if these friends of yours have brought poison out of the Blackthorn with them. If I let them go, they'll only run into another knight, and they'll kill you with them."

As he advanced across the bridge, Cirion took another step back, his sword coming up higher. He started to reach back for his lute, then caught himself, his hands twitching in the air. Preparing magic, then. At least he had enough sense to know he couldn't hold Myerzo off with sword alone.

While he was still twitching his fingers, Myerzo lunged forward, catching Cirion's blade with his own and turning it roughly aside. He'd hoped to knock it from his fingers, but he couldn't manage that, not without the risk of putting Cirion entirely off-balance.  The last thing he wanted was to dumb his lord's son into the ravine.

Cirion knew that, he could tell, because his eyes narrowed in thought as he stumbled back. Then he whipped his free hand forward and snapped his fingers. "I'm sorry, Myerzo, but I need you to stop there."

There was a hum to the last two words, almost melodic, and it grew to fill Myerzo's ears as he fought against the magic dragging at his limbs. He could feel all his muscles stiffen, his arm locking tight with his sword only half-extended. When he tried to open his mouth to shout, his jaw was tight, and a second later he couldn't even blink his eyelids.

"Run," Cirion called over his shoulder. "I can't hold him forever. Go now, into the trees, and I'll catch up!"

Heeding his warning, the ragged band snatched up the few camp goods they'd already unpacked and rushed away into the forest. Myerzo tried desperately to move a foot, a finger, anything, but his own body resisted him, bound still by Cirion's magic. Not even his voice was free, so he couldn't tell Cirion how stupid, how suicidal, he was being.

Stepping forward into the range of his now-useless sword, Cirion reached out and put a hand on his stiff shoulder. "I know you don't really want to hurt anyone. Now you can tell them I bespelled you, and you won't be held to account for your failure."

That wasn't what mattered, Myerzo would have told him, if he could have. What mattered was that Cirion still would be. He couldn't feel any relief for his own absolution, couldn't even be warmed by the realization that Cirion was concerned, a little. Not when Cirion was, in the same moment, making himself an outlaw. The taint of the Blackthorn would be on that band he had taken under his protection, if they'd slept there, and he was signing his own warrant by staying with them.

"It's all right," Cirion added. "I- there's no easy way to explain this, and you wouldn't believe me if I tried to tell it quick. But it is all right, and they are untainted, and I swear to you, I made sure of that in a way that can't be fooled. I'll show you someday, I promise. I'm not as frivolous as you think, and I'll prove it to you, and to Father. But I have to do this first, and I can't explain it to you now, but it really does matter."

While Myerzo was still trying to unwind that confusing little speech, Cirion stepped away, backing up steadily, rapier at the ready even though Myerzo still couldn't shake off his magic. He was across the bridge and vanishing among the bushes when the spell finally broke. Pins and needles rushed through Myerzo's limbs all at once, and he shuddered, then had to catch his balance.

Cirion spun about and bolted into the bushes at a run. Myerzo growled and drew himself up to run after him. He'd run straight to those travelers, and then-

And then another long chase, because Cirion wouldn't just stand back and let Myerzo do his duty, that much was clear. And at last, once he'd exhausted enough of Cirion's magic that he couldn't play tricks anymore, a slaughter.

Myerzo let the rage bubble through him a moment more, searing his throat, making his throat ache. Then he forced it back down into his belly, put a lid on it and set it to simmer. He sheathed his sword, and turned his back, and started back across the bridge to the edge of the ravine, where he'd left his horse. He'd let Cirion go for now. The Order would put him on their trail again soon enough, anyway. For now he'd let him have his petty victory.

Corric

🍁 Where does your OC go when they need to have some time to themself? Would they ever have their own “comfort corner” filled with all the things they like? Do they have a favourite spot outside that feels like its theirs and theirs alone?

TBH, Corric doesn't isolate herself much, because a childhood in a large halfling family made that difficult, and it worried her family when she did do it. But she did have her own little corner of her room (which was shared with siblings, mind) which was all hers, where she kept her childhood treasures, when she was young. Probably she wouldn't feel the need to do that as an adult, she'd like her own house but she'd spread her stuff across it and invite people in, but she would keep a couple things (mementos and letters) secret to look at on her own. As for the outdoors, again, there was no place that was just hers because of the size of her family and the nature of halflings, but she got into the habit of, if she needed some fresh air and space, to find a chore to do outside, and she still does that. If Corric volunteers to go wood-gathering or water-hauling or hunting for the party, that's what she's doing.

🌻 What little things do they notice about people or the world around them that make them happy? What tiny little treasures do they find in the normal every day that makes the world seem a little brighter for them?

Well, on the larger end of the scale, she notices every time someone she considers a friend calls her one, whether to her face or in her earshot! She knows everyone isn't as freely affectionate in that respect as she is, so it's nice to be reminded that they think they've crossed that threshold with her. As for the everyday, she's one of those people who really likes brisk clear mornings, and bright sun with a breeze, and so on, so it always delights her when the weather's nice. She also likes just watching people go about their regular business and routines. It is very soothing to see someone do something they're so practiced at that it's automatic, especially, if it's clear that it's soothing for that person as well.

---

Ryxtlin

🌳 What is your OC’s favourite way to relax after a stressful day? Do they have a favourite book to curl up with? A hobby? Or do they have a nice bubble bath and have an early night to bed?

It sort of depends on the stress of the day! If the main stress was people being judgemental at her, she'll spend some time going over her spellbook and fantasizing about being a dragon and eating them, while if it involved frustrations re: the spellbook and her reading difficulties, she'll leave it alone and just daydream entirely about the dragon thing. On the other hand, if it's more of an action-stressful day, e.g. adventuring troubles, she's more likely to spend a lot of time self-grooming, getting herself clean and neatening up her scales, and then go to bed early and... fantasize about being a dragon. Listen. Thinking about being a dragon is always soothing.

🌸 What are some of their favourite things and why? List as many as you can think of!

Fun spells that she feels justified in using, fancy wizardly clothes, the feeling when she masters a spell and feels it click, the admiration or fear on other people's faces when she does show it off, people asking her advice or listening to her opinion, really good clay and the free time to play with it, watching Scrape work at the forge, having her questions answered clearly and without complaint, finding something rare and fancy to pass on, a very nice hat (whether wizardly or not), good quills that haven't gotten tattered yet, cheese (any cheese), good conversations with friends who take her seriously and don't have a problem with how she talks.

---

Fsssh

🍄 What are your OCs favourite snacks? Their favourite comfort food which always cheers them up when they’re down? Favourite meal to make? Do they enjoy baking and cooking and are they any good in the kitchen?

He doesn't have cook's tools proficiency in the Wormwood timeline like he did in his original design (UA artificer versus actual book artificer, a tool proficiency got dropped somewhere), but I do still headcanon him as a pretty decent cook, just because he puts a lot of effort into getting it right. He likes doing it for other people, but cares less when it's just him he's feeding.

His comfort food... people get real weirded out when he says this, but it's scrambled eggs. Listen, they're not kenku eggs, there's nothing weird about it, but he keeps it kind of private because it is upsetting for others. His favorite snacks are nuts and hard candy, both of which he saves for himself as treats.

🥀 How would your OC decorate a notebook or journal? What kind of things are written in there? Could you give an example of a nice entry?

Most of Fsssh's notebooks are pretty bland--he takes what's available at the time he goes looking for them, and usually buys in bulk. Taking what's available means that he does sometimes end up with some fairly wild ones, though. He doesn't really have a personal journal, he has notebooks divided up for different projects, but there is usually one that he saves for his own observations that he thinks would be irrelevant to his master or anyone else reviewing it. Sketches of people, mostly, and little personal notes about them, such as things they seem to like or dislike. That notebook isn't any visually different than the others, but it's the only one where he just draws and doodles, instead of diagrams, so there's usually doodles on the inside of the front cover....

"Spent the evening in the garden. Several small insects.

[rough little pictures of crickets or whatever]

Purple flowers glowed at what I calculated to be about an hour after twilight. Saw the kitten again, it liked the fish, wasn't interested in the soft cheese. Approximately .8 pounds now and becoming more agile.

[several very rough doodles of a kitten playing with a dangled flower]"

---

Phyrea

🌾 Describe your OC through the eyes of someone absolutely head-over-heels in love with them

Phyrea is always bright. Physically and literally, of course, because only when her magic is damped does her hair stop blazing; even when she's overextended herself and too short to do any but the smallest spells, her tight coal-pale curls still glow redly with the fire within them. But internally, too, and it shines through in her bright golden eyes, flashing with anger or delight in turns, and in her quick tight movements, never still, always pacing and turning and bouncing on the balls of her feet, and in the sharpness and energy of her gestures, like she has to talk with her whole body to get her passion across.

She's small, a little over five feet and nothing on her but wiry muscle, but she has endurance to spare, and that muscle flexes and tightens over her bones like a dancer's, giving her a grace and speed to match the flames that she creates. She wears little, and what she wears is simple, because when there's a good chance you'll be ablaze at some point during a fight it's foolish to don what will only burn. She's light on her feet and light-fingered, precise, if not delicate, though she can be so very careful when handling something, or someone, she wants to preserve. But most of all she's passionate, filled with the light of justice, refusing to ever stop shining in its pursuit.

🌺 What does your OC do to calm down when they’re scared or after a nightmare? Do they have any special comfort items or need to be reassured by a specific person? How do they handle this if they’re alone?

Yildgrunn

🐇 What animal would they say best represents them?

She'd say it was the noble badger: mighty, warlike, and determined to persevere!

(Dwarves tend to, for obvious reasons, subconsciously limit their heraldic symbols and fursonas to burrowing creatures. The badger is basically the dwarven heraldic equivalent of the lion.)

🔥 What’s their favorite candle scent?

She really likes woody scents, but also has a soft spot for jasmine.

🐝 What stereotypical high school clique would they fit into?

The jocks, but definitely the girl jocks--the girls who played soccer and basketball and hung out with the cheerleaders, but got away with being not quite as femme as they were because they Did Sports. (I don't know how stereotypical this is, but that was a definite actual clique in my high school.) Though she wasn't one of the really popular kids, she was one of the ones who hung on the edges but was permitted because they were on the team together.

---

Ryxtlin

📚 If they were the protagonist in any book series, what series would they choose? Alternatively: what would be their favorite book?

This is hard! My immediate instinct is actually to say the Harry Potter series, because she'd like being allowed into a wizard school and basically being The Chosen One, but I think she'd chafe at the institution of Hogwarts and the whole thing where Harry's status and power come from his parents. I wish I remembered the Percy Jackson series better, because if I am remembering it correctly, they beat out arrogant opponents by working semi-outside the system, and she'd definitely go for that.

Or, to go non-fantasy, I think she'd really enjoy being Miles Vorkosigan. Underestimated and derided for his physical abilities, but smart and capable enough to run rings around his opponents, and always coming out better at the end than he started with.

💳 What one thing that they don’t need do they waste the most money on?

Fancy wizard-looking clothes! Depending on how we define "need," anyway, because Ryxtlin's reasoning is that she has enough of a disadvantage in being taken seriously that she needs to wear the fancy wizard outfits to balance that out. If we're talking something that even Ryxtlin admits she doesn't need, it's probably either tasty snacks or decorative trinkets.

🃏 If you had to choose one tarot card to represent them, what would it be?

The Chariot! Going by my tarot book, both the upright and reversed meanings fit well for her.

---

Vasuvinti

💅 What are some things they have strong opinions about?

Pretty much all of her opinions are strong opinions! Vaz doesn't believe in being lukewarm about something. But she feels very strongly about fair competition (if you don't make sure the playing field is level, there's no pride in having won!), acting compassionately towards others (indifference and cruelty corrode the soul and cause you to dissociate from your inner self), and stretching routines (they're not just vital, if you do them right, they're fun!).

⛄ What’s their favorite season and why?

Summer! She feel obliged to like it best, since "summer's child" was one of her nicknames as a child, but she also really likes the heat.

🍑 Which emoji would they use the most?

🌞 (why post a mere smiling face when you could smile with the sun's enthusiasm?)

---

Phyrea

🔫 What would they die for? Kill for?

Phyrea would die for Tiaathque or any of her family, easily. She'd also die, in general, to protect an innocent. Overall, though, she's of the "I would die for this, but I'd rather make you die for it" school of handling villany, so she'd kill for all of the above and more! She's actually very cavalier about killing anyone she sees as having bought too deeply into the Bad Systems she's trying to overturn and uproot, in part because she's very bad at articulately talking them around.

🌹  What songs remind you of them?

Burn It Down, by Vixy & Tony, is a ship song for her and Tiaathque for me, but it's very much Phyrea's attitude and voice speaking throughout.

💉 Which Deadly Sin do they most correspond to? Which Heavenly Virtue?

Pride (with a definite side-helping of Wrath) and Courage.

---

Housin

🎲 Do they have any vices?

Housin is one of those people who, asked to name their flaws, would provide you with a list that looks suspiciously like "has actual human emotions when they think they shouldn't," but as for actual vices.... She's not supposed to take intoxicants, since they interfere with her faculties, but she's had to get tipsy "to successfully accomplish the task" a lot more than is really reasonable. And there's the whole... coldly assassinating people thing. Also, she gives in a lot to anger, since she's successfully pretzel-twisted herself into believing that any deep desire to do harm to someone is borne from logical grounds and a sense of righteous justice, given that she, supposedly, doesn't feel anger.

🍰 What’s their favorite food?

Raisins. Or grapes. Or anything derived from grapes (when the mission requires her to drink, it's funny how it usually requires her to drink wine). But raisins are the most common and "permitted" treat.

⏳ How do they feel about death?

It's a natural part of life! Given that she's a former gladiator and a part-time assassin for her monastery, Housin doesn't feel a lot of weight around it. She's supposed to--the theory of her monastic training is that she judges the impact of each death around her carefully, and kills with the understanding of its import--but she's already fucked up enough about emotions that she never was able to really pick up on that and internalize it properly.

---

Rudnik

🎉 Do they celebrate any holidays? How do they celebrate?

Back home, Rudnik celebrated all the traditional dwarven holidays--the Feast of Smiths, Silvernight, the Deep War anniversaries, and so on--but they're mostly social holidays, and he doesn't have the social structure for them as an adventurer. Also, a lot of the religious ones, he doesn't feel right participating in anymore with his warlock connections. A few of the rest, mostly the solemn memorials, he tries to honor quietly on his own in some small way or another.

And once he's in a party, he definitely finds or makes everyone Silvernight gifts, even if the rest of them don't recognize the holiday.

🌙 Which D&D class would they play as?

He'd play as a fighter. Solid, sturdy, able to protect the group and take the big hits without going down, with a purely physical approach to obstacles. Not a self-insert, but definitely some wish-fulfillment going on.

🙁 What do they consider to be their worst quality? What actually is their worst quality?

Both were powerful, and both unfamiliar, and it was the curiosity of that which drew Tiaathque to them. She'd been studying magic here for almost a hundred years, first from the late headmaster and then from his texts, and she could often recognize even those spells she didn't yet have the power and discipline to cast. These, though, she couldn't identify from their aura. She knew that they were part of the tower's innate magic, but nothing more. So it was in the hope of identifying them by effect and sigil that drew her downward through the winding stairways of the tower, until she reached the long-unused dungeons beneath the lower floors.

It was locked, but Tiaathque had keys; she had keys for every lock in the tower, including many places she by rights should not have had access to. She unlocked the thick lead door and set her shoulder to it to force it open, the untended hinges groaning in protest. In the end she could only manage to open it a foot or so, just wide enough to wiggle through.

The spells were both ahead, glowing sigils alight on the walls and ceiling and floor of the lone cell directly down the hall from the heavy door. Tiaathque stepped forward, tracing one set with her gaze, putting together this mark and another one and recognizing, at last, the spell-

And then something in the cell moved, and she fell back, screaming, her hand snapping up to trace the sigil of a shield spell in the air in front of her. For all the evidence, it simply hadn't occurred to her that the dungeon might be occupied.

"Whoa! Whoa, calm down, I'm not going to hurt you! Not that I could, even if I wanted."

The movement in the cell resolved into a figure, stepping forward out of the shadows into the glow of the light spell that lit the hallway. The prisoner was shorter than Tiaathque, but more stockily built, the firmness of muscle easy to see given how scantily she was clad. She had flame-red skin, so bright as to nearly be orange, and only a thin cap of white fuzz across her scalp. Her ears were pointed, but otherwise she had the more curved and solid features of a human or halfling, instead of the hollow angles of an elf or a gnome.

She also, Tiaathque could see now, was weighed down by sturdy chains. Her hands were turned palms-outward, to show that they were empty, but they were down by her sides as if she didn't have the strength to raise her shackled wrists up. When she took another step forward, the chains at her ankles rasped against the stone floor and dragged her to a stop.

Lowering her defensive hand, although the shield remained up, Tiaathque stepped forward and frowned at the chains. Through her spell of detection they were nearly glowing with abjuration magic, which was the last clue she needed to understand the second spell.

"See? I can't hurt you, and I wouldn't want to if I could."

Tiaathque pulled away from her study of the imprisonment spell when the prisoner spoke a second time. She had a trace of an accent, dragging out her 'o' sounds and rumbling the 'r's, though Tiaathque couldn't have guessed where it might be from. Possibly, she thought as she looked up at the sigils of the first spell again, from another plane.

"Who are you?" she asked, which seemed politer than 'what are you,' through from the way the prisoner's smile went from ingratiating to wry, she guessed the real question had been implied.

"You can call me Phyrea. What's your name?"

"Tiaathque Hiannodel." Phyrea didn't look like any fey she'd ever heard of, which was the only reason she could have thought of to hold back her true name.

"Tiaathque? That's pretty." Phyrea took a couple steps back, sitting down on the stone slab of a bench at the back of her cell and sighing in relief as it took some of the weight of the chains. "What brought you down here? You aren't one of the wizards who locked me up, and you don't look like someone here to question me."

"I didn't know you were down here," Tiaathque said, feeling her face heat. "I'd realized that some of the tower's spells were active that I'd never seen before, and I came down to see them. I, um, I didn't think about why they'd activate spells in the dungeon."

Phyrea laughed, ducking her head as if to hide her giggling. It was charming enough that Tiaathque couldn't be offended.

"Why did they activate these spells?" Tiaathque asked, glancing at them again. She might as well ask. "That's a planar binding. Are you an elemental?"

"Half of one, to hear my parents tell it," Phyrea said. "We're pretty sure that father was an efrit. I've never had that spell work on me before, since I was born on this plane and all. But I've got a phoenix blessing to blame for my magic, and I can't flare that up either, so I don't know what's going on with this place."

Frowning, Tiaathque came up to the bars, peering through them into the shadows behind Phyrea. There was another set of sigils there, glowing very faintly, and she hummed in satisfaction as she recognized the effect.

"A cancellation field. It's like a constant dispelling spell, targeted to cancel out any spells except ones that have been pre-identified--that would be the other ones built into this cell. It's not something you can cast as a spell, it's an enchantment on the stone itself. Think of that wall as being a magical artifact. The planar binding probably doesn't have any effect on you, if you've been immune to it before, but I could see them activating it anyway just to be on the safe side."

"Hah! I knew it couldn't be the planar binding." Phyrea surged to her feet, triumphant, and then stopped short from striding up to the bars herself as Tiaathque shied back. "Whoa, sorry, I promise I wasn't going to do anything."

Taking a deep breath, Tiaathque made herself stand her ground in front of the bars. If Phyrea had wanted to attack her, she would've done them while she was distracted looking at the spell. Or so she assumed. Charming laugh aside, she didn't actually know anything about Phyrea.

"Why are you in there?" Tiaathque asked, curiosity compelling her past propriety once again. "The wizards here wouldn't lock you up just because you're half-efrit... I don't think. I don't know all the new faculty, but the Headmistress wouldn't. Did something happen with your powers?"

"Something happened, all right." Phyrea's face twisted briefly as something strong passed over it, gone too fast for Tiaathque to try to read the emotion. Then she was wearing the wry smile again. "I was trying to help some people out in that town out- west of here, I think? They said your tower was east a day's ride. But the local constables didn't see it that way, and they told your people I was throwing fire around and 'endangering the populace,' and I guess you take that pretty seriously."

"Unrestrained use of magic for unnecessary purposes is anathema to the philosophy of the Iron Circle," Tiaathque said, and snorted at the face Phyrea made. "That's how the first Headmaster used to talk. Old Count Rendon gave him the land for the tower, and in exchange the Headmistress is supposed to help his family deal with anyone who uses dangerous magic in the county without permission."

"That's fair. Fire magic spooks a lot of people even if they don't have some 'philosophy' about how and when it gets used," Phyrea said. "But I was trying to help, and if they let me out, I'll keep it banked until I'm out of the county. Is it the wizards who decide if you let me go or not, or is that the Countess' call?"

Something had changed in her face, Tiaathque thought. It wasn't as if she knew the woman well enough to be able to say that, and yet all the same, she was certain of it. Some of the frankness had gone out of her expression; it was falser, now, a hint of strain. As if she had decided that Tiaathque wasn't a sympathetic audience. Tiaathque wasn't sure what she herself had said or done, or what look might have crossed her own face, to cause it. But it made her wary.

"I don't know how it works," Tiaathque said. "We've only had one other prisoner here that I remember, and it wasn't the Count's people that brought her in. But I'll find out."

"Thanks," Phyrea said, her smile brighter but still a little false. "Let me know what they say, okay?"

She half-raised a hand to wave, chain grating, and then dropped it again. Tiaathque turned away with an absent nod. Her mind was already elsewhere, chewing over Phyrea's imprisonment, the active spells and the security of the dungeon, the way she'd shut herself off a little when Tiaathque had... when she'd mentioned the arrangement with the Rendon family, that was it.

There was more to Phyrea's story than some well-intentioned flames gone out of hand, or she'd be in one of the warded rooms for the students suffering from magic overload, not locked up like a criminal. And now Tiaathque was invested in finding out what the story actually was.

***

The Headmistress would know. She had to; no one could activate the dungeon's spells without her permission. Tiaathque headed up the winding stairs towards her study.

By the time she was halfway up, she'd resolved not to ask the Headmistress about her questions. At best, the Headmistress would brush her off, the usual distracted dismissal that Tiaathque got whenever the Headmistress was reminded of her existence. At worst, she'd actually get her attention long enough for her to realize that Tiaathque had let herself into the dungeon, and then her secret ring of keys would be gone forever.

When Tiaathque reached the study, the door was closed, the rune on the door glowing yellow to indicate that the Headmistress was in, and available, but hard at work. Interrupting her would get the chilly edge of her tongue, and draw her attention to what Tiaathque might want. Tiaathque backtracked to the nearest library room, then returned to sit in the window seat opposite the doorway, opening a book on elemental resistances and settling down to wait.

She'd gotten most of the way through the book, and the good afternoon light had faded and required magical replacement, by the time the door swung open at last.

"Oh- Tiaathque," Headmistress Gennan said, startling back when she saw Tiaathque and pressing one hand to her chest. She hesitated on Tiaathque's name, as if she wasn't quite sure she'd remembered it correctly. "I hadn't realized you were there. Did you need something? I'm quite busy at the moment, I have a meeting with the Countess, but if it won't take long...."

"No," Tiaathque said, sitting up and setting the book on the window seat. With the front cover facing down, just in case the Headmistress had thought to glance at the title. "I wanted to check something in one of Headmaster Hiannodel's old spell journals, but it wasn't in any of the libraries I checked, so I thought it might be in his old library behind your study instead. But I didn't want to disturb you."

"Well, I appreciate the consideration, but if all you wanted was to get into the library, I would have let you in." Headmistress Gennan stepped out of the doorway and gestured through. "I won't be back in tonight, so I'll just lock the door behind me, and you can pull it closed when you leave."

"Thank you, Headmistress." Tiaathque hopped out of the seat and walked past her, pausing to duck her head in the respectful bob that always seem to make the faculty dismiss her as timid and harmless as she passed. "I'll make sure it's locked for you."

The Headmistress made a noncommittal sound of agreement that left Tiaathque sure she'd be back to make sure of the door before she went to bed for the night. Not that Tiaathque had any intention of leaving it open. She respected the office of Headmistress, even if she wasn't personally fond of its current occupant. For all her flaws, Headmistress Gennan did a very effective job of running the tower.

More effective than Headmaster Hiannodel's had been, no matter how much more affection Tiaathque had for the old elf who had tutored her in magic as a child and offered her his family name when he discovered she didn't remember her own. He had been far kinder to his students, and some of them had abused that. Headmistress Gennan had never had one of her necromantic theorists run rogue.

Tiaathque shook off those thoughts. She wasn't here to reminisce about her old teacher, or judge his successor. She was here for answers to a specific question. And she wouldn't find those in old spell journals, but she would find them in the office. Stepping inside, Tiaathque carefully pulled the door close until it was only just slightly ajar, open just far enough that the lock wouldn't engage and trap her in. Then she held up the quill she'd infused with her light spell and studied the papers on the Headmistress' desk.

It was off to the side, and slightly crumpled, but a day of even Headmistress Gennan's steady work wasn't enough to bury the letter. Tiaathque knew it at once by the bleached white of the paper--an expense that Headmistress Gennan would never both with for her own correspondence, or respect from a fellow-wizard--even before she flipped it over to see the broken Rendon seal. Perching in the Headmistress' chair, Tiaathque opened the folded missive and began to read.

When she finished the--really rather brief--letter, she set it down again, careful to place it in the same spot and position that she'd lifted it from, and to disarray the rest of the papers as if she'd set a book on top of them just in case. She was a little surprised to see that her hands weren't trembling, and then wondered why she expected them to. It wasn't as if she'd known Phyrea, after all. She'd seemed friendly, but Tiaathque knew that seeming friendly didn't always mean someone was actually so. And if Tiaathque had been charmed for a moment by her initial frankness, her expressive face, her giggling laugh-

That was her problem. She'd been told before, by her more concerned professors, that she didn't spend enough time practicing her social skills or getting to know new people. It was her own fault that a new, friendly face had charmed her so thoroughly that a lie she should have expected from the first instead cut her so deeply.

***

At first she didn't intend to go back to the dungeon at all. It was simple logic to assume that Headmistress Gennan's meeting with the Countess had to do with his affair. All Tiaathque had to do was stay away a day, or two, or however long it took to arrange whatever security was necessary for whatever punishment the Countess deemed appropriate, and Phyrea would probably be gone for good. Even if that punishment turned out to mean long-term imprisonment in the tower's dungeons, which it might, that didn't mean she had to go back. She didn't have any reason to.

She finished her book, first, reading through most of the night, casting the cantrip in the appendix and testing its effect on a candle flame. The spells in the dungeon were surely sturdy enough, but there was no such thing as being too careful. Then she settled down in meditation, falling easily into a trance. That was one advantage of being an elf, instead of one of those races whose emotional tumult could disturb their sleep.

When Tiaathque came out of the trance she was calmer, settled by the meditation and the rest, and she felt less troubled by the emotions of yesterday. It was all right to be upset when a first impression proved wrong, and it was all right to respond positively to a good first impression, and she didn't have to carry either of those things with her as she went about her day. There was a first-year class she had promised to ward in the morning, and personal study in the afternoon, and this evening she was eating with Professor Selethen in his office and having him divine the safety of a new spell that she wanted to try.

She made it all the way until just after lunch before she was heading back down the steps to the dungeon, some bread and cheese in hand. It was a stupid excuse, and she knew it; under an imprisonment spell Phyrea was probably only breathing out of habit, and certainly didn't need to eat.

But Tiaathque thrust the food through the bars at her anyway, meeting her startled smile with a flat stare and holding it until the sincerity in the touched expression faded away.

"You killed two of the Countess' soldiers," Tiaathque said. And here it was, the trembling in her hands, tight on the bars as Phyrea stumbled back and away. "You wounded four more of them. You told me you were trying to help people, but you burned them alive and you did it on purpose!"

"I was trying to help people!" Phyrea shouted back, and Tiaathque saw the sigils of the cancellation field glow brighter and brighter, flaring up and up until they seemed to be outlined on the wall in orange-red flame, leeching away whatever magical flaring had tried to accompany Phyrea's burst of emotion. Her hands had come up to her shoulders, clenched fists dragging the heavy chains behind them. "They had a kid down on the ground, he wasn't even old enough to have a beard, and he threw a rock at a constable because they were mocking his father, and they knocked him over and they wouldn't stop kicking him, and I know I shouldn't have done it and I probably just got his town in more trouble for it, because that's the way these kinds of bullies work! But I thought they were going to kill him, and I wasn't going to let them do that! I just put up a wall of fire, they'd have been fine if they hadn't tried to come through it, and-"

She stopped, abruptly, and put her head down, dropped her hands, took a deep breath. The sigils on the wall faded back down to a faint glow again, only needed to draw off whatever flicker of natural magic she got from her elemental side.

"And I got out of control, once they grabbed me. The phoenix blessing is- it's protective, that's part of how it works, and I was too mad to rein it in."

Tiaathque had been pressed up against the bars while she shouted, half-stunned by her fervor, dazed and alarmed by the fiery blaze along the back wall. Now she took a step back, wobbly and uncertain, trying not to be pulled in by Phyrea's display. She wanted to believe it. There had been so much pain in the outburst, it was hard to believe that it wasn't real.

But she'd killed six people, Tiaathque reminded herself. There was no way to say that she wasn't faking that emotion. It wasn't as if Tiaathque could read minds.

...Well, no. That wasn't true. She could read minds. She had a spell for that.

She didn't much like the idea of using it. She hadn't liked learning it, and that had been with a willing subject, Professor Selethen opening his mind to her for her first few tries and then making her test the spell against his mental defenses until she'd reached a level of skill that he considered adequate. But the Professor had told her then, when he laid his spellbook open for her to copy it, that he wanted her to have it as a defense against strangers, so that she could divine the intentions of people whom she didn't know and couldn't trust. This was exactly the sort of situation he'd been talking about.

"If you're telling the truth," Tiaathque started, and then trailed off.

But Phyrea raised her head, her shoulders lifting, and looked at Tiaathque with almost pathetic eagerness. Her eyes were bright yellow, Tiaathque noticed for the first time, the color of a burning candle.

"If I am?"

Tiaathque gathered herself and started again. "I know a spell that I can use to... it's a spell to detect thoughts. If you're willing to let me use it on you, I can go deep into your mind, and I'll be able to- it's not a truth spell, but I'll be able to tell what you're feeling. I'll know your intentions."

Phyrea nodded eagerly. "You can do that. I don't have anything to hide. Not about this, anyway. If it means you'll trust me, and let me go, you can do that."

For a moment Tiaathque hesitated. She hadn't said anything about letting Phyrea go. All she wanted to know was to know her intentions. To know if she was right to be angry, or to feel betrayed.

But that wasn't much of an incentive for Phyrea, was it? If she thought she was trading honesty for freedom, her enthusiasm made a lot more sense. And if she was telling the truth, if she'd lashed out in defense of someone else, then--Tiaathque didn't have much sympathy for people who would harass and beat villagers.

"Let me cast it," she said, instead of making any promises. She backed away from the cell a few feet, to get herself out of the cancellation field, and lifted her hands into the air to begin shaping the spell.

Phyrea stepped up to the bars, hands at her sides, maybe thinking that the closer proximity would help. She locked eyes with Tiaathque for a moment, an uncertain half-smile hovering around her lips, and then she closed her eyes and deliberately relaxed her face. Tiaathque decided not to interrupt the spell to tell her that neither were necessary. A few more gestures and some murmured words, the quill in her hand shivering for a moment with energy, and then she felt the shift in her awareness that meant the spell had taken effect.

At first all she had was surface thoughts: a muddled wash of distress and anger and anxiety, 'will she believe me' and 'why did i do that' and 'how dare they do this.' The last was too nonspecific for her to determine the 'they,' which should be troubling, but Tiaathque had to push past that. She probed deeper, ready for resistance; Phyrea made a startled noise as she felt the pressure on her mind, because there was no way that Tiaathque knew of to do this subtly, but her instinctive desire to push Tiaathque away was muted by the how intensely she wanted Tiaathque to read her sincerity.

One of the first deeper thoughts she encountered was 'wow, she's cute when she's concentrating,' and Tiaathque was helpless to keep from blushing. Phyrea opened her eyes and her cheeks immediately went from scarlet to brick, presumably at the realization of what Tiaathque had picked up on; Tiaathque felt the blush spreading down her neck, heat prickling up to the tips of her ears.

This worked better when you were talking to the person about the subject you were investigating, Tiaathque remembered Professor Selethen saying. She also remembered that was easier said than done when you were the only two people in the room, but she had to make the effort. And they both needed to stop thinking about what they were currently thinking about.

"So how did you- did you come into the village and see the constables attacking the boy?"

"No," Phyrea said. "I'd been there a couple days, talking to people. I was planning to go to the castle, because usually nobles will put me up for a few days at least if I have enough stories of the exotic north to tell them. But I stopped in town to ask whether anyone was in residence, since there's no point knocking on a castle door if the owner's in court, and I got an earful about your Countess. The townsfolk told me to stick around a few days til market and see what her constables were like before I braved the castle on my own."

It was hard to separate out the constant flashes of thought from the words she was speaking aloud. Phyrea had a very active mind, thoughts and feelings sparked from memory in an instant and then tumbling away and fading out of view. But Tiaathque could feel the remembered anticipation sour into reluctance.

"And it happened on market day?"

"Yes. The way the townsfolk told it, the Countess wants to be rich and fancy so she can show off in court, and this county isn't set up to support that kind of lifestyle. They don't have any big trade centers, only three farming towns. So she's upped all the taxes, and you've got to pay a percentage on anything you sell or buy at market. The constables come on market day to enforce that and take the Countess' cut. Farmers, though, they don't trade in money that often, and you can't take a percentage of chickens or cloth that's worth anything. So the constables get on people who don't use coin, and they were getting on this one man."

She was getting angry again at the memory. Tiaathque could feel it rising in her mind, sparking off passing, meaningless thoughts about the cruelty of overburdening farmers and the low apparent quality of the Countess' thugs.

"I saw his son stand up throw a rock. And I saw them jump him. And I saw his father rush in to apologize, and offer all the coins he had, which was just a few coppers, and one of the constables grabbed him and twisted his wrist till he screamed and dropped the coppers in the mud, and then held him back while they kept kicking the boy, just over and over again, and I-"

The cancellation sigils on the wall glowed orange for a moment, and Phyrea's fists clenched. It was all anger now, boiling up, with dull shamed thoughts behind it as she judged her own actions in hindsight.

"I threw just enough fire to scare them, and I tried to jump in and grab them both and put up a fire wall. But it must have been enough fire to make them mad, or scare them enough that they thought they had to take me out. So I gave the kid to his dad and told them to run, and the rest of the market was clearing out, and then I tried to stand my ground. That was the part I shouldn't have done. I don't regret that a couple got killed, because I told them to run back home with their tails between their legs and they didn't listen, but it's going to come down on those good people, and that's not fair."

That was the thing looming largest in her mind, Tiaathque saw, alongside the anger and the frustrated desire for action. Phyrea believed with every fiber of her being that the soldiers, if denied her as a target, would come back around to harm the townsfolk, and that the Countess would probably back or encourage it. She'd seen it happen before, and to her it was the natural outgrowth of oppression, indifference about the underclass turning into deliberate cruelty. It was heavy on her mind, eating at her, driving a restless frustration that she'd been trying to hide in their spoken conversation, making her desperate for freedom.

It was too genuine for Tiaathque to disbelieve, the mix of anger and unfounded anxiety and real, undisguised concern for the people she'd tried to defend. Tiaathque dropped the spell. "I believe you."

"You do!" Phyrea grabbed the bars of the cell and slumped against them, smiling with relief. "You believe me. You're going to let me out?"

Tiaathque hesitated for long enough that Phyrea's relieved smile began to fade, her shoulders going stiff as her expression went shuttered again.

"You- you never said you were going to let me out, do you."

She felt a pang in her chest. "I want to. But, um, the Tower does have an agreement with the Rendon family. The county is the Countess' affair, and we're not supposed to interfere. The Headmistress isn't going to accept your story as a reason to break her agreement."

"You made that agreement years ago. Generations ago, if I'm counting right, because they talked about the Countess' mother being the last Countess, the fair one, and the Count's time was in the good old days before her. I know you're an elf, everyone else I've seen here is an elf, but you have to take human time into account when you're dealing with humans."

"That's not going to matter," Tiaathque said. "You haven't met Headmistress Gennan. She cares about the Tower, not about people, and she's going to do what she thinks will be best for the Tower."

"Hmmm." Phyrea was chewing on her lower lip. "Could you let me out? Personally? I could scorch things up like I escaped, and then it wouldn't be your tower's fault. The- no, actually, the Countess probably would hold you to account anyway. People like her are like that."

She slumped against the bars in defeat, hands dropping with a rattle and clank of chain, and Tiaathque felt another pang at the sight of her pinched, unhappy face. She could feel an impulse rising in her, a fierce feeling totally out of proportion with the situation. Phyrea was clearly the stronger of them, the power needed for her bonds alone making that clear, and Tiaathque the timid scholar was in no position to be defending anyone--but that look made her want to do it anyway, to stand in front of Phyrea and ready counters for everyone who'd put her here.

It was an inexplicable urge, restless and foolhardy, and Tiaathque rode on it as she stepped forward and raised her hands to the wall beside the cell. She didn't have the counterspells for these chains; dispelling the imprisonment was beyond her power. But she had something better than magic.

She had the keys to the tower.

Phyrea startled back as Tiaathque pulled out her keyring, her second, secret inheritance from Headmaster Hiannodel. It took a minute for her to find the key for the cell door, trying each one that she'd never used before. Then it swung open and Phyrea stepped forward. Her grin lit up, briefly, then faded as the heavy chains stopped her short before she could step through it.

"Don't worry," Tiaathque said. "I have the keys to every lock in the tower. I was promised that."

Tiaathque grabbed her wrist, turning the shackle until she saw a small keyhole appear. Kneeling down, she worked her way through the keyring, searching for a key small enough to fit. There was one, only, a tiny tarnished thing that didn't look quite like a proper key--the end of it was hex-shaped, instead of having teeth. But she put it in anyway, and turned until she heard a click.

She'd only unlocked one shackle, but all of them fell away at once, hitting the ground in a great rattle of metal. The thick, rusty iron seemed to coil in on itself, chains grating and scraping as they wrapped around and around, until the horrible sound turned to a quiet chiming noise, and there was a small coil of tarnished silver chain on the floor of the cell.

"You weren't kidding about every lock," Phyrea said. She reached down a hand to pull Tiaathque up.

"Headmaster Hiannodel told me once that you should never have a lock, or a spell, that you can't get out of from inside. Always have your own key. It was mostly about magic, but...." Tiaathque looked around at the inside of the prison cell the Headmaster had built. "I think he worried sometimes about how Headmistress Gennan was going to treat me once he was gone."

"You mentioned her." Phyrea pushed gently on her shoulder, nudging her out of the cell. "What's she going to do now? If the Countess gets after her, will she come after me? You said she'd do what's best for the tower."

"Maybe," Tiaathque said. "We'd better be ready for that."

"We?"

Tiaathque felt her face heat again, and this time the prickling of reddening skin came with a heavy weight in her stomach. "If, um, you're willing to have me along. I thought we could find the family you were protecting and get them out of the town, so that if the Countess is the kind of person you think she is, we can get them somewhere else where they'll be safe. I'm not trained for fighting, but I've been studying abjuration for decades, and I can put up shields, and wards, and alarms. But if that's going to make your life harder, I can-"

"Whoa, whoa, I wasn't saying no!" Phyrea grabbed her hand, grinning at her, and- Tiaathque couldn't help but stare, wide-eyed. Now that they were out of the cancellation field of the cell, the white fuzz that Tiaathque had assumed was all of her hair had come alight, fire blazing over her head without burning the flesh beneath. "That's wonderful. If we can get them out of the county, she can't come after them, and hopefully she'll be so busy chasing us, or getting on your Headmistress, she won't have as much time to hassle anyone else."

"And if she's distracted with that, we have time to figure out how to deal with her," Tiaathque said. "We don't know yet if she's actually sunk to having people hurt, or if she's just letting her soldiers get away with doing it. But we can take care of them, and if she's that bad, we can take care of her too. I have a problem with attacking people for no reason. But if they're doing harm, I don't have a problem with trying to stop it."

"That's wonderful," Phyrea said again, still grinning at her. "Let's go."

Tiaathque felt a shiver of trepidation run through her. But she twisted the hand Phyrea was holding until she could grip back with equal force, and with her other hand she shoved the ring of keys deep into her robes. If she ever wanted to come back to the Tower, she could get back in.