Thalia is. Thalia is, wants to be bold. In the way a person who tries too hard to impress wants to be bold. That dull ache behind the ribs that says; pick me, want me, choose me, but never acts on the impulses they want to that would make that a reality.
Thalia is. Thalia wakes on her mornings, tying her hair in a simple ponytail - bound once at the top and the bottom so that no stray hair might leave it. Dead corded root as prescribed, no dye or colour to mar its functionality. Her soap is unscented, her perfume just enough to lace her aura with just enough flower to consider her feminine. Concealer. Academy robes bound with a clasp. Sensible shoes, no heel if she ever needs to wear them. She goes barefoot like most today.
Thalia is. Thalia is the darling of Natare Academy, the number one magic university on the continent. Darling, but not highest scoring student. Appreciated - for what she can do for staff and students alike. Her mentor is Verdan Blackbough, esteemed researcher and head teacher on the artefacts that litter this great land of Levis; despite the fact that too many of the artefacts he has bestowed upon her fail to amount to more than trinkets or junk. Still, she is needed and that is what is important. At least Thalia thinks it is, isn't it?
Heading to the Natare Academy for Magic and Higher Learning, Thalia is driven. Her footsteps on the cobbled stone path lead her past the information terminals, holographic rectangle projections holding the image of Helper Br1n, spanning from deep green gourds, as silvered spires wrapped in leaves jut from the ground around her into massive spires.
The pale green robes wisp around her as she walks on sensible shoes, early for a meeting with her mentor and an esteemed guest - knowing both will be on time or late, and knowing she has nothing she needs to prepare.
Students and teachers mill on the natural grasses and packed dirt common areas, reading holo books, or chatting freely as Br1n laces the air with some harmless sound, spliced together from a dozen bards in the rest phases of their songs.
Thalia sees the self help club setting up their bio-cloth mats, getting ready for meditation and stretching poses and considers that it must be nice to have the lack of responsibility that allows someone to do that kind of task.
She passes the amphitheatre, tiers of pressed earth laced with vinular seats, twisted and grown from a root stock that pulses with life. Thalia remembers the last time she had presented there, some meaningless artefact of steam and magic- some sort of olden food heater. Nice for history but completely useless to modern society. Professor Blackbough had given useless congratulations, but everyone assembled knew she was wasting her time, they weren't interested.
She starts up the hill, towards her laboratory - some small space in the back end of the farthest building, not even on the roof, but somewhere on the second floor. Though she supposes the winds around the rooftop gardens might be a bit much for her lab work. Still, Thalia wishes she was in more than a glorified broom closet, especially as Blackbough is bringing someone into her space.
She moves through the automated doors, watching the membrane open on the side of the building as the magic encircling the entrance senses her getting close. Her hand brushes the edge of the massive plant that makes up the laboratory building, the tree hundreds of years old and enhanced by magno-biologists. So much achievement holding her tiny little slice of failure.
Heading up the stairs to her lab, she passes larger groups, knowing it is only time before her avalanche of barely successes has her rolled up and deposited into a larger group to do the grunt work of a team with more funding and a much more impressive research lead.
She reminds herself that she is needed, that she has a meeting with her mentor even as she pushes her body those last few steps towards a future she dreads just a little.
Her lab door is semi-transparent, and two shadows move behind the frosted membrane of her door. She stands there, breathing heavily as she composes herself. Focus, Thalia, Focus.
She straightens her robe, tightening the clasp on her waist that pulls the robe together, just anything that will make herself more presentable.
Getting ready she strokes beside the door, activating the circuit that causes it to peel back, revealing the space inside. It is categorically a mess, holobooks in a stack on one corner of her desk and part of the floor; samples and old artefacts that were deemed unnecessary littering the space under the desk; tracings and schematics adhered to walls and windows; and perched around all that are two foliad men.
Standing is her mentor, resting his weight on one foot, as he talks to the guest, the long ponytail-mowhawk combo swaying from his extended cranium, his teal grey skin shining with oil as he tries to look impressive for the guest that is sprawled over her desk and chair, feet up wearing of all things shoes into her personal space.
A vein throbs at her temple and a rictus smile etches across her mouth before she can help herself, bowing to the guest before moving to her mentor, resting forehead to forehead in formal greeting as her eyes carefully search his.
Her voice moves low. "Professor, this guest is unexpected. Who might I be introduced to?"
Verdan moves back, watching his pupil, hoping she stays her normal congenial self. "This is Orion Valtor, of the Valtorian Research and Preservation institute." The older gentleman gives her a shit eating grin, blue eyes staring at hers from beneath barely there glasses. Human blood in his distant past, she guesses, noting the difference from most of the foliad norm. Makes sense for an organisation intent on privatising historical research - especially if it connects to the artefacts that spread through the skin of Levis in the ruins the humans left behind generations ago.
Orion doesn't stand, doesn't even try to make nice from his lounging in her seat, in her office, just slowly raising his bushy eyebrows as if tempting her to react. His voice is like milled gravel. "Your professor has been persuaded to hand you over to me, for guidance and mentorship. You should consider it a boon." His gaze is cold despite the mocking facial expression, as if she is the butt of a joke he has been crafting long before her conception.
Her hands press clipped nails into fleshy palms, threatening to draw blood just to hold herself poised. "My mentor is assigned by the Academy, at least until I submit a binding worthy of my graduation at the Primus rank." Her gaze is troubled as she looks between the elder men, the wild but distinguished of her old master, the slick and rich of this potentially new master.
"Oh that is simple, I only need you to create a holo worthy of bringing to the Dean, such that I can prove that you can work outside the system of the Academy. Don't you want to do something of actual worth?" Orion says, pushing up to stand, approaching her easily, and just looming over her.
Close now, Orion's voice drops to a whisper. "I could always illuminate the faculty about your late night visits." He smiles a mouth with too many teeth, before brushing past her. "I have left a task with Verdan, your Professor Blackbough, for you to try. Should you decide to grasp life by the collar."
And with a sweep of his grey laced hair, he departs down the hall.
Why. Thalia, student in all things from the past, from artefacts to ruins, from ancient foliad to lost human. Why there were old human relics in digs long gone by, noone could really say - but there they were, even if there were barely ten humans in the entire city of Natare, and Thalia had not met any personally. There were hints that humans had appeared on the Levis continent before, Orion's eyes that unnatural blue for one, but currently... no such luck as far as Thalia was aware.
Professor Blackbough had left Thalia with a strange case, about the size of a presentation podium, coming up just under her ribs as she had hauled the hard thing from her laboratory, all the way down those stairs, across the top ridge of the courtyard that bisects the Academy, even as other students and professors watch on passively, towards the Grand Library.
Orion had mentioned that the case had reacted favourably to holo-books, and so Thalia had pulled a favour she was owed from the librarian on shift, and hauled the case into one of the stacks of bindings, ready for action.
She circled the case, pacing with her bare feet on the slick inside of the library floor, light refracting through the coloured membranes, dancing the grand library in swirling colour as most depart the library to get lunch. She would eat later, for now she had a puzzle to set up.
It was a case without dust, and without a layer of sand or mud - it had been excavated before and it had been inspected by others. It was not stone itself, nor biomass, natural or augmented. A simple scanning circuit (the natural way of spells for the foliad people), showed that inside contained hollows, but it had no seam. It was some weird form of mineral she guessed, coating whatever is inside like some artificial geode like she has seen in some of the weirder caves people without passes were not supposed to visit.
She pulls down a holo-book, holding the binding at various distances as she scans and marks down the result in her small tablet, tally marks and 'magic quill' flourishes, noticing a gentle pulse inside this case. It 'feels' like some sort of communication device the more she explores it, the way it seems to be sending out readings in all directions, the unnatural outer surface, that or something ritual. It doesn't have any magic in or about it that she can detect, not even the scars of a magic circuit burnt out, though it does seem easy to generate a kind of contact shock by being close, so it might store some sort of energy.
She moves to a terminal to bring up Br1n, watching the avatar of the intelligence unfurl from a flower into the face of an older foliad woman, tinted blue through the holographic haze. The elongated parietal bones, the pointed ears, the large eyes - all normal foliad. The strings of 'code' - unspooled magic circuits that trail through her face - unique. Br1n sports today a wavy bob cut, a long moondrop earing from each ear tip, and a dangly necklace completes her look. "Student Thalia, how can this one be of service?"
Thalia thinks for a moment, running over the ideas and working out in which order she wishes to execute them. She's definitely going to have to procure one of the solar cells to run a current through this thing. She might also see what happens if she can get a pyromancer to see if they can cut into this without damaging it. Maybe. As a last option probably. She could have Br1n search the archive for any mentions of similar devices - though VRPI possibly already did that - though she should be thorough. There is no time limit on her research - she could head over to the desert city of Saburra and check out their archive, for although the Grand Library of Natare is the largest on the continent, it is not like Br1n can know what is in EVERY library. Well probably not.
She requests the archive search, to begin, pacing slowly as she considers why she's doing this at all. Certainly there's a little drive to please Verdan, and a little to stick it to Orion and all the people of the academy that see her as merely someone they can use. There's a touch of wanting to keep her independence from a team, not that she thinks she'd be less with one.... but years of being left alone to get on with things was nice. There was another thing, but she locked that away, sent it into the Forbidden Forest to live in exile with all her other selfish thoughts.
Maybe she should get lunch while Br1n thinks. It is not like the case can move easily. Its not like anyone will want to move it, and if they do Thalia is just back to life at the begining of today - a constant buzzing of insects.
She sits at a bench, strumming a loose leaf that has grown away from the main body of the seating arrangement. She waits on her friend, Yarrow, whom she's known since the class they shared back in Secundus rank. Yarrow was on the Combat Magics track, hoping to become a Paladin or Hunter, and Thalia is glad for them, if they arrive to lunch on time.
She closes her eyes a moment, thinking about all her responsibilities as a shadow passes across her eyelids. She should not be interrupted here, having chosen a table for two, and her intruder was not the naturally loud that Yarrow tended to be.
Thalia could hear the gentle breath of her shadow, even over the latent rabble of the others in the common space. As she focuses on the sensations, refusing to open her eyes and give the shadow a way in for conversation, she hears the brush of silk on silk, depicting a socialite or successful academic - though not connected to the Academy. Orion might be able to afford such an outfit, but that doesn't seem his style.
She can hear a clinking, like the sounds jewellery on moving fingers makes, but... stonier? This is the second time today materials are just not behaving the way she is used to. It is starting to make the list of all the things she wishes would just go away.
Thalia opens one eye in exasperation, "Would you just-"
The man before her is not anything she has ever seen before, not Foliad, not Troll, maybe monster, but those jagged horns give her suspicion otherwise. He is.... slick. If Orion was slick like plant sap stroked through hair, this man was slick like the contents of a solar cell, liquid smooth and catching the light. Again, jagged horns, with rings slid on close to the skull, deep black body hair, rings adorning his fingers and a luxurious purple business suit. His eyes are like midnight, no sclera, and his skin rolls with shimmers of colour, so her eye has no rest when she gazes upon him. And this being is a Him, oozing masculinity from every pore, despite the fact she thinks he could wear the most traditional foliad ceremonial dress and still give that aura.
"Glad you could join us." The man says, rolling the word us along his tongue like he is playing with it.
Thalia shivers, unnatural desire springing to her limbs. "I don't like being played with, and I know you are playing with me."
"With the dah-ling of the Academy? Everyone's little helper bee? What me? I. Would. Never." His eyes, dance with mirth and mischief even without the details that would make knowing such easy to see.
"Who are you?"
"Who am I?, Who are you, Miss Moondance, that is always the question. All you need to know is that when the time comes, pick the outfit that stands out. You deserve to be seen."
She feels a shiver of delight race down her spine and as she goes to retort-
