Magistream Roleplay

[EstherGamer]

@faedemon

Alan turns at the sound of a new voice—a girl on the younger side, a bit nervous-looking, who's almost bumped into him. Alan might usually be a bit overwhelmed at all the new people around him, but since this one and Laus seem so unsure, Alan instinctually sucks it up and tries to keep everyone calm. Mostly, he wants to make sure the egg isn't gravely injured.

"It's alright. We're just checking out Laus' egg here, making sure everything's alright." He steps back, next to the newcomer, to watch the other person examine the egg in Laus' arms. "You look on the young side. Did you just come from the new magi orientation?"

“Y-yeah. I’ve been incredibly nervous all day because of that…”
(Sorry for taking so long life was a mess-)

[faedemon]

The anxiety in the newcomer's voice makes Alan smile reassuringly. "You'll get the hang of things soon enough. I'm Alan; I grew up in the Keep but have only officially been a student here for a few years. What's your name?"

While awaiting her response, Alan's eyes stray back over to Laus and the other student as they examine the nandi bear egg. Hopefully it isn't as bad as it looks.

@EstherGamer

[audrei9]

@EstherGamer @faedemon

Laus raised the nandi bear egg to his ear, carefully listening. He couldn't hear anything out of the ordinary, but he was certain that the hatchling was still alive. His anxiety was also beginning to ease from seeing how invested these students were in protecting a new egg, and seeing a newcomer who shared his anxiety made him feel less alone.
"I think... that we should go to the healer."
He begins to walk, and gestures for the other two to follow.
"Whatever it is, I'm not sure if we've got enough experience to deal with it the best way. I think it would be best if we took this to one of the teachers." He paused. "Unless either of you have other plans...? Thank you for offering to help me out, by the way. You are very nice."

[faedemon]

Alan looks up at Laus' words, and takes in a relieved breath. Yes—grabbing an older magi is likely the best move here, and Laus' decisive tone brokers no further argument. But then he seems to back off a bit, allowing Alan and the others room to drift off if they don't want to keep bothering.

Nice of him, but Alan doesn't consider it. He's invested in this egg, now, and thinks of his own off and safely nestled. Alan couldn't bear it if a thing like this happened to either of them.

"I'll come with you," he says easily. "And I know the Keep quite well—if you have a particular teacher in mind, I can take you there quickly, but otherwise I know a shortcut to the nursery. I'm sure the egg specialists there would be able to help."

@audrei9 @EstherGamer @Cindertail

[EstherGamer]

@faedemon @audrei9

The anxiety in the newcomer's voice makes Alan smile reassuringly. "You'll get the hang of things soon enough. I'm Alan; I grew up in the Keep but have only officially been a student here for a few years. What's your name?"

While awaiting her response, Alan's eyes stray back over to Laus and the other student as they examine the nandi bear egg. Hopefully it isn't as bad as it looks.

“I-I’m Eivee. I’ve only been here for a few years so I’m still getting used to things.”

"I think... that we should go to the healer."
He begins to walk, and gestures for the other two to follow.

Eivee then looks over at Laus, and nods, ready to follow him.

(The annoying thing about the way I write these posts is that Vee's text color doesn't convert to BBCode properly, and I might sometimes forget to fix it- (I write posts in a document so I can spend a few days on them, then convert them with an extension so I can post them easily))

[audrei9]

@EstherGamer @faedemon

"It's nice to meet you, Eivee, I'm new here too."

Laus knew the approximate location of the local infirmary, it was where he had spent much of his first day at school learning human anatomy and basic first aid, should the need to offer appropriate help to an injured human ever arise. However, he wasn't sure if they were that good at catering to injured creatures, so Alan's suggestion of the nursery sounded much more promising for help.

"By the way, thanks for offering to help, Alan. Can you show us the shortcut to the nursery please?"

[faedemon]

@audrei9 @EstherGamer

Alan smiles. "Definitely."

The Keep is a sprawling thing: stone passages and great rooms and open-air bridges litter it, an unintentional maze, a thing to be explored and charted. It's a gorgeous place, never fully known; secrets are always there to be uncovered, as the discovery of the elemental chamber this past spring demonstrated. Alan grew up here—it's home.

The nursery is tucked away in the stomach of the Keep. It sits in a fortified position, watched over carefully by Master Belmos and the direwolf guardians, Kolsyn and Dydrist—but it is not unwelcoming. Far from it; many a magi keep their eggs safe here, and receive training in egg care, and consult each other on best practices and new knowledge. It's a softly bustling place. Not all magi utilize the nursery—some prefer to keep their eggs close, and some eggs require more specific conditions than the Keep provides—but everyone knows that if you're not sure about caring for an egg, this is the place to go.

Alan leads the little group in skirting the lingering crowds of new students, ducking through a few side passages and, once, cutting entirely through a classroom (thankfully not currently in use). Entering the nursery, it's quickly apparent that Master Belmos isn't around—but, two other friendly faces are.

Aisli and Urse, twin sisters from Boreus who came permanently to the Keep some five years ago, are a kind, if strict, pair. Aisli is a nonmagical expert in healing, and Urse is her magical match; the two of them make a great team in assessing the health of a creature. They have equal experience in handling egg care and creature care, and it seems right now they're taking a shift with the eggs.

"Hi there!" Alan greets. Urse looks up and acknowledges him with a fond tilt of her head. "Can we bother you two for some help? Laus here has picked up an egg that seems injured." He gestures for Laus to come forward as Urse, interested, puts down the notes she'd been leafing through.

[audrei9]

@faedemon @EstherGamer

Laus relaxes a bit, now that he's out out of sight of so many strangers. Still, he watches his words carefully when talking to these older magi.
"I obtained an egg, like our assignment said so," he began, lifting up the nandi egg to the healers. He turned it slightly to show the nasty wound on its side, but before he could continue, a gasp from Urse froze the words in his throat.
"My goodness! Where on earth did you find that egg?" she said as she hurried over to collect the egg. With a swift motion she clutched it snugly to her chest as she had likely done with thousands of eggs before, and with her free hand she put her fingers in her mouth and whistled. No sooner had she done so, a pair of life prism foxes leapt up from under a desk and pressed their paws to the egg, there was a flash and the foxes scurried away as quickly as they appeared. The egg remained miscoloured, but the crack was completely gone.
Urse bent over to examine the egg more closely, frowned and shook her head, then delicately set it aside on a cushion with an indentation perfectly set for an egg. "I'm afraid I'll need to take this egg for a few days. The High Magi need to see it."
Laus froze in horror.
"It doesn't look that bad..." Aisli said, her confusion clear. In response, Urse took out a cloth and wiped a bit of the scabbed ooze from the hairline thin crack on the shell, and handed it to her twin.
"While I get this egg patched up and write a report on what's affecting it, how about you take a look at this under a microscope?"
As Urse was pulling out paper for a typewriter, she caught a glimpse of Laus' fear stricken face.
"Your egg will live. It's who created the disease that I'm worried about."
"I didn't do anything!! It was like that when I found it, I swear!!!" Laus found himself blurting out in a panic before he could stop himself. Urse gave him a sad but reassuring smile.
"No one believes that you did, Laus. This kind of magic is far too advanced for a student like you to master. In fact, there's only one known magi in history who's been able to grow a disease such as this, which is why I'm writing to the High Magi council to report that she's returned. Now go and take at what it looks like, under the microscope."

While Urse was talking, Aisli had been setting up one of the microscopes she used for diagnosing infections. She carefully picked a bit of the scab off the cloth, slid it onto a glass panel, peered at it carefully before rolling the microscope on its stand over to the three students for their review.

[faedemon]

@audrei9 @EstherGamer

At Urse's dark words—"It's who created the disease that I'm worried about"—Alan shivers. He, like everyone at the Keep, has heard tell of Dark Mages: how they lurk and scheme, twisting magic in on itself, contorting it. His parents, last time they deigned to stop by, had whispered in hushed tones while they thought Alan wasn't listening of... someone. Something. So, Alan knows threats are out there. Could that be what Urse means?

Alan hadn't noticed any dark magic in the egg Laus held, but then Alan has never been very magically sensitive. His has always been a magic that needs support: from enchanted objects, from creatures. He bites his lip in frustration. Where Alan couldn't, those little life foxes must have been able to sense the same thing that made Urse gasp—more of a reaction to anything than Alan's ever seen from her.

He drifts away to Aisli as she sets up her equipment. Alan has always found more of a connection with her, between the sisters.

He watches her face pinch as she gazes down at the sample. She sighs, and steps back, and murmurs to herself something Alan only barely catches: "So this is what you look like." Then she smooths her expression over, and rolls the stand towards Alan as the other students come up behind him.

"Take a look," she invites. "It won't bite—our foxes did their work well."

Curious, Alan does so.

It's... he doesn't quite know what he's looking at. The dried ooze, gazed at through a magically enhanced lens, becomes something less solid and more—how to describe it?—stringy. Rendered inert by the prism foxes, it does not move, but holds the impression of movement: of squirming, burrowing, infecting. Alan feels like, just looking at it, he's at risk. Or maybe it's the seriousness of Urse and Aisli's expressions that's scaring him.

He lifts his head and steps back, letting someone else take a closer look. He doesn't want to anymore.

Alan turns to Urse, currently attending to Laus' egg.

"The disease," he says. "If you hadn't stopped it, what would it have done?"

[audrei9]

@EstherGamer @faedemon

Urse speaks while Laus and Esther are taking turns looking.
"10 years ago, a pair of dark magi we were never able to identify created a disease, experimenting with the infectious powers of a mortfelis to see if they could infect other creatures and bring them under their control as undead thralls. We attempted to hunt them down and prevent such experiments, but a large number of evidence suggests that they had nearly been successful in their exploits, and we feared that we had only been slowing them down in their plans, rather than prevent them entirely. Since the destruction of their underwater labatory, there's been no sightings of infections and we assumed they had finally aborted their vile work. Had they succeeded in their experimentation, they would have raised an army that would bring devastation to the entire land."

Far less audibly, she continued a sentence more under her breath.
"Some magi theorise that the only reason we were able to defeat them was because of their quarreling."

Aisli took the egg.

"This egg will need to have part of its shell surgically removed. It's been a long time since I've had to do this." she said, as she began to search in cupboards for her implements.

"Why? The virus is dead, right" said Laus.

"You are correct," said Urse, "but there's more to the virus than how alive it is."
She twiddled with the microscope a bit, as if to show something different, then took a piece of the cloth with the crusted off debris from the egg's wound and muttered something while waving her hand over it. A second later, there was a small flash like a pinch of reality had folded in on itself, but only for a second. And for a brief few moments, something else could have been sighted beyond the fabric of matter.
Runes. Twisting, serpentine, toxic runes.
"This disease is cursed so that it cannot be healed directly through magic," Urse said, "and anyone who tries to do so risks bringing a wasting curse upon themselves. The risk is negated with surgery, so I'll let dear Aisli do her bit."