#variya

"Whether or not you choose to accept being the Interceptor, that is what you will be. However I can call someone else for help, and they'll do your duties for you." "Do our duties... for us?" "Correct. A being not from this world will inhabit your mind."

Aevis meets Kiddo

I also added a height chart that includes names and ages!

Variya and Kostas both like men, Reza is bi and Roman likes everyone 💕

“Come here, Variya,” Aeolanth’s crisp, tense voice floated from another room. “I need to see you.”

The young woman looked up from her work.  Well - she was not so young anymore.  The Plague of Undeath had ripped through Lordaeron years ago, and time all sort of bled together when one didn’t sleep, eat, and passed the time underground.  Variya wasn’t sure how old she was these days, or even when ‘these days’ were.  There were rumors of a defeated Lich King and of old forces ripping through the continents and sundering them anew, but that meant little in the stony, torch-lit Hallways of Lordaeron City.  What she did know, however, is that the almost kind quality to Aeolanth’s voice sounded very… foreign.  If she was honest with herself, it was downright worrisome.

She clicked across the laboratory, shoes tapping against the stone floors to the summoning chamber her mistress currently occupied.  Aeolanth had always insisted on heels and buckles which would jangle as her laboratory’s uniform.  The better for hearing her apprentices come and go, and there had been many - apprentices, that is - over the years.  With a split-second pause at the door, Variya asked: “… is something you needed my assistance with, Mistress?”

Aeolanth looked up and regarded her apprentice with shrewd, greenish-cast eyes.  “No, child, I want to have a conversation with you is all.  Close the chamber doors behind you.”  Mistress DeVries never asked, only commanded in her soft, Southshore-accented voice; no matter what command she gave, however, it had always been difficult to refuse her.  There had been once, years ago, when the Forsaken’s partnership with the Val’kyr had begun that Variya had been sorely tempted - but that was long ago by now.  She was in deep, too ingrained in the workings of the Banshee Queen’s chosen and their science to back out without either a fight or facing a most hostile world indeed.  

Obeying orders, Variya shut the heavy wooden door softly and then returned to stand near - but not in front of - the seated woman.  Her mistress sat in silence for awhile, while she regarded the circle at her feet.  Wondrously complex, the stone floor had been etched and sealed in silver, and there was a line of salt within that that traced a smaller, more impenetrable circle.  The eldritch runes within glowed softly purple and green, and they cast a sickly light on the older woman.  “Variya.  How long have you been in my employ now?”

She genuinely had no clue.  “Several years, Mistress,” seemed like the safest answer to give.  One of her clawed hands twisted the edge of her bottle-green, broadcloth sleeves, but a sharp glance upwards from Aeolanth stopped her nervous tic.  

“And do you feel you’ve learned enough in your apprenticeship with me?”

If Variya still drew breath, it would have been caught in her throat.  What was this?   What was Aeolanth getting at?  She’d been little but faithful since she started as her apprentice and - “Mistress?  Are you - are you dismissing me from your service?”

Aeolanth’s eyes widened slightly and her sparse eyebrows pulled upwards in surprise.  She was clearly taken aback.  Her voice, however, belied nothing: “Calm yourself and answer the question.”

“Then - I need clarify - do I feel I’ve learned enough about what, exactly, Mistress DeVries?”

The circle on the floor glowed a shade of sickly off-white.  Aeolanth avoided her gaze and continued to stare into it like someone searching its depths.  “Abjurations.  Containment field and shields; summons.  Do you feel you have learned about those topics adequately enough to stand on your own as a summoner?”

“No.”  Variya’s answer was swift and unthinking.  She wanted to clap her hands over her mouth, for fear of repercussion, but if her own audacity was surprising, then Aeolanth’s response was even more so:

“Good.”

“Good?”

A faint line pulled at the corner of the older woman’s lips, quirking it upwards.  Aeolanth with a smile was jarring to Variya, who had long learned to keep her face impassive and expressions neutral in her presence.  “Good in that now we begin the next phase of your training.  Variya.  Have you read Greydraft’s Treatises on the Theory of Summoning?  Perhaps Morganstern’s Works on the Nature of Azerothian Cosmology?”  She chose her words carefully, enunciating each.  “If not, then I suggest you start there. Read through those, glean what you can, and we will begin our training in earnest when you can demonstrate your knowledge.”

“I thought -”  Variya quieted herself until the words were more measured, made more sense.  “But what had I been doing, Mistress, for the last several years?”

“Preparing to study the true Art.  One does not learn how to harness the power of the Fel without the proper precautions and study.”  She must have seen shock leaking through Variya’s mask.  With a slight, upwards tilt of her chin, she added crisply, “This is not Dalaran, Variya. Ours is not the work of the Kirin Tor.  We serve greater masters, ones infinitely more exacting, less forgiving, and capable of causing irreparable harm than Rhonin and his ilk.”

Her eyes were piercing, their muted hazel shining through the Forsaken glow.  “And what sort of mistress would I be if I denied you both the opportunity to harness that power, and the precautions to do so safely?”