• Solo • Out of the Rain

[Victor Amielle]

22nd of Saun, Arc 717

From Victor Amielle’s diary:

The Institute of Metaphysics is the smallest of the educational branches in Scalvoris which is a shame. In my opinion there is hardly a science that is more important that the study of the arcane for mages – as well as alchemists, on a lesser scale – have the ability to reshape the world and its inhabitants. I likewise consider the university’s ban on certain disciplines to be unwise. Every discipline can be used to harm and to kill. Besides, should we not at least try to understand how those dark disciplines, such as Aberration, work so that we can defend ourselves better against them?

[…]

In spite of the fact that I am not entirely content with the way things are being handled in Scalvoris, I have decided to enroll as a student as well as accept a job as a research assistant at the Institute of Metaphysics. At least they allow the study of the arcane here which is more than can be said of a lot of other cities. I want to know more about the power I have been given. Besides, there are all those strange things that are happening on this island. If I find out what causes them, I will likely become famous beyond my wildest dreams …

Lightning flashed across the rapidly darkening sky, and Victor abruptly closed his diary and grabbed his pack. He still had about half a break before he had to start his work at the Institute of Metaphysics, but if he wanted to reach the university before the thunderstorm began in earnest, he needed to leave immediately. He practically raced down the stairs, but he was out of luck. The first raindrops already started to fall the moment he stepped out of the door and onto the street, and more and more followed until the rain was so thick that he could barely see what was in front of him. Within two bits he was completely drenched. He was used to bad weather – he had spent the better part of the previous seven arcs travelling the world of Idalos – but that rain had a particularly unpleasant quality to it.

He had thought that it would at least bring some relief from the oppressive heat that had troubled Scalvoris for the previous couple of trials, but the opposite was the case. The rain was unusually hot and turned the island into some sort of sauna. On top of that he could hear thunder rolling in the distance. He began to run, past miserable looking people that huddled in doorways to wait out the worst of the thunderstorm and reached the entrance to the university just as it thundered so loudly that it seemed as if something in the sky above him were breaking or as if the Immortals were fighting over Idalos again.

At least, he thought somewhat sarcastically as he opened the door and slipped inside, relieved to finally be out of the rain, I won’t catch a cold because it’s so hot that my clothes will immediately dry again.

[Victor Amielle]

When he arrived at the office that he shared with a few other assistants as well as the occasional professor, he noticed that somebody was already there. A red-headed woman several arcs his junior that was wearing a bright yellow blouse and a violet skirt was sitting on one of the desks, munching on a sandwich stuffed with roasted meat and lettuce. When he had first arrived in Scalvoris he had taken Alison Jeeve for a fellow student due to her age and her quirky and sometimes slightly inappropriate behaviour, but he knew that she was an Associate Professor at the Institute of Metaphysics now and thus one of his immediate superiors. She did not seem to be aware of the fact that she was supposed to give him orders and treat him like her part-time slave though which was fine with him since he did not make a good slave anyway.

“Morning, Victor!” she greeted him cheerfully, not bothering to swallow her food before she addressed him. Alison Jeeve considered good manners to be a waste of time. She preferred to focus on the really important things. “I see that you have already taken a bath today! I barely escaped the thunderstorm myself! It’s quite something, isn’t it?” she asked and took a swig from the bottle that stood next to her on the desk before she went back to munching on her sandwich. Judging by the small happy sounds she made while doing so it had to be quite delicious.

“It is”, he agreed while he took his jacket off, draped it across his chair and let a hand run through his hair that was still slightly wet. He did not bother to criticize Alison’s behavior. It would have little effect on her. Besides, there was a part of him that almost liked her lack of proper manners because it contradicted everything that he had been taught during his childhood in Lysoria. He wondered what his older brother Stefan would think about Professor Jeeve. Perhaps he would mention her in his next letter and ask him.

“I’ve never seen anything like that in all of my travels”, he continued. He had travelled through deserts that had been so hot that barely any living creatures had existed there, and he had often been holed up in a run-down inn or even a cave for trials because the rain just would not stop, but he had never experienced a combination of both. “I didn’t know that it was possible for rain to be nearly as hot as boiling water. I can’t help but wonder if the extreme weather that we are currently experiencing is the work of a mage or perhaps an Immortal. Do you think that we should investigate it?”

“I wouldn't be able to do it”, Alison admitted. Magic was a touchy subject in most of Idalos, but here, at the Institute of Metaphysics where a lot of the staff as well as the students were mages, one could talk about it relatively openly. “At least not without giving myself such a bad case of Overstepping that I’ll spend the rest of my trials in an insane asylum. Feel free to investigate if you want to though. If you find out something worthwhile, I’ll make sure that you’ll be allowed to write a paper about it and publish it in a journal.”

“Want something by the way?” she suddenly asked and broke the remainder of her sandwich in half. Victor looked at it for a few trills, and then he shrugged his shoulders and took it because he was hungry anyway although fraternizing with your superiors was not always a good idea. Publishing a paper on the other hand definitely was, since it would not only ensure that current as well as future generations would be aware of his work, but also increase his fame – and that was something that Victor definitely craved. In fact a part of him was convinced that he was meant to be famous, even though such arrogance was not a good quality to have.

“That reminds me”, Alison said. “Somebody dumped a ton of papers onto my desk yesterday. I’d appreciate it if you helped me go through them and organize them. We’ll each do half. Maybe you’ll even find something that will be of use to you in regards to one of your personal projects. Some of those papers deal with recent events”, she added.

[Victor Amielle]

“Of course”, Victor said. This was one of the reasons why he loved his current job. He did what he would have done anyway – he studied magic as well as unusual phenomena – and he got paid for it. In fact he would likely have assisted Alison and her colleagues for free if they had asked him because the island fascinated him that much. Perhaps it was a good thing that such had never occurred to them for he would likely have been broke within the season and be forced to swallow his pride and beg his family back in Lysoria for money.

“I was hoping that you would say that”, Alison said and grinned. She walked over to her desk, retrieved a stack of papers and handed them to Victor before she returned to her own desk again where she sat down and worked quietly. Victor watched her for a few moments. He found it astonishing how she could be so loud and behave so inappropriately one moment and work quietly and diligently just a few trills later. She seemed like a completely different person then. He watched her for a few moments as she sat there, going about her work and occasionally chewing on her pencil – another bad habit, it seemed – before he turned to the papers that she had given to him and sat down at his own desk.

It turned out that most of them seemed to be research papers of some kind and written in Common, but there were a few that had been written in the Ancient Language and Rakahi, languages that he spoke, but that he was far from fluent in. He had access to a few decent Rakahi dictionaries, but good Common to Ancient Language Dictionaries were unfortunately hard to come by. The Eidisi were illogically protective of their language and did not include certain word classes in their dictionaries on purpose, as he had been forced to realize.

He had already sorted most of the papers into different folders, sometimes using a dictionary when he had not been sure what exactly they had been about, when something suddenly caught his eye. It was a tiny slip of paper that mentioned that the inhabitants of Havadr had woken up to find the sea red with blood on the 46th of Ymiden. It seemed to have ended up among Alison’s other papers quite by accident. It said that all the fish seemed to have exploded simultaneously. It reminded him of something that he had witnessed just a few trials before in Scalvoris. The sea had been red there as well, and there had been things in the water. Were the two events connected?

He looked at Alison who was so absorbed in her work that she did not seem to notice what was going on around her anymore, and then he decided that he would investigate once he was done for the trial. The two events were too similar for it to be a coincidence.

[Pash Raj'oriq]

Thread Rewards

Victor Amielle

Overview

My dad used to ask me if I was making rude eating noises, “Does it taste good?” And, of course, being naive, I’d nod enthusiastically. And he’d add off-handedly as a reminder, “It doesn’t sound like it.” Eventually, I learned my lesson. I see that Alison has not, although Victor doesn’t seem to mind all that much anyway. Ah! Thanks for investigating our event! I promise there will be more … hahahahaha.

Points

XP:
10 | These points cannot be used for magic.

Fame:
N/A

Loot

N/A

Knowledge

Skill Knowledge:
Etiquette: Swallowing your food before you speak
Etiquette:Fraternizing with your superiors is not always a good idea
Research: The advantages of publishing your research results
Research: Organizing research papers
Research: If something seems strange to you, investigate!
Linguistics: Ancient Language: Hard to learn

Other Knowledge:
Alison Jeeve: Associate Professor at the Institute of Metaphysics
Alison Jeeve: A mage
Alison Jeeve: Has bad manners

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