GW2RP: Entirely Unplanned Priory Vandalism pt1
There was a really short scene between the one in Hoelbrak and this one, but I’m not sure I actually saved it OR that we actually finished it. But luckily everything that happened in it is pretty effectively recapped in the dialogue so it’s all good.
Continuing the saga of “Alaois Has No Idea How Much Trouble They’re Actually Causing,” this time with drygrasses‘ Elias Bardizian, thisgolddolyak‘s Osgar Nordwind, and moryera-thorne‘s Moryera
(no warnings in this part but it gets grisly later on.)
Moryera’s late night studying has finally caught up with her. The sapling rests her head on a kitchen table next to a small stack of textbooks and homework, before jolting upright from her impromptu nap. (Perhaps she should have chosen somewhere further away from the nice cozy cooking fire to work on her classwork.) She rubs at a brown patch of leaves on one side of her face, and wearily gets back to work on her assignment.
—
Osgar Nordwind sits hunched at the corner most wooden table, his forgotten dinner plate pushed to the side to make room for a stack of yellowed scrolls. Silently condemning the hard benches he was convinced needed to be replaced years ago, he rubs his knee as he reads, occasionally sparing a silent glance toward the other end of the room. Practically falling asleep at her studies, he noted, before returning to his own work. “You shouldn’t push yourself so hard,” the norn says simply, adjusting his glasses with a gloved hand.
—
Elias Bardizian peers into the room, noting the massive fireplace and roasting boars. Was this really the right room to find a senior scholar? He hopes the Priory explorer he ran into outside hadn’t just been trying to get rid of him, though it was perfectly likely considering how many people he was bothering. There are only two people in the room, and while the sleepy-looking sylvari very well could be a senior researcher, she doesn’t look much like an “Osgar Nordwind” to him. Edging carefully around a massive cook, he approaches the grizzled norn in the corner. “Professor Nordwind..?”
—
Moryera blinks a few times to bring the room back into focus. Oh, the professor’s here. “Um, well, I can’t really sleep right anyway, so I thought I would at least be productive while I’m awake.” ‘Productive’ might not be the best word to describe her work right now. She picks up the top sheet from her stack of papers and squints at it. “…I’m probably going to have to re-copy this.”
—
Osgar Nordwind peers at the young sylvari over the top of his glasses. “…I’ve found it’s better to rest when you need it, or you find yourself with a mountain of trash work that needs to be fixed.” He nods pointedly at the papers. “You’re no good to anyone passed out, kid.” As he turns to reapply himself to his reading, the norn hears his name, and stares up without lifting his head. “That’s me,” comes a gruff reply, after a few moments of silence. He gives the intruder a slightly withering look. “What do you need?”
—
Elias Bardizian quails under Osgar’s glare, backing up slightly and pretending he’s part of the table, or maybe the cook. “Sorry for bothering, but someone said you could help me? I need to report, uh, an extremely suspicious individual. Er.”
—
Moryera glances across the room as she packs up the aforementioned mountain of trash work. For some reason, that human looks really familiar. It could just be her mind playing tricks on her at this point though, and she’d hate to interrupt. It sounds important.
—
“Suspicious individual?” echoes the norn, furrowing his brow and straightening up to get a better look at the unassuming lad. “Well don’t just stand there like a slack-jawed skritt,” he presses, sliding back the bench with a bit of effort. “Go on.”
—
To be quite frank, Bardi hadn’t really expected the severe norn to listen to him. “Er, well,” he starts, knowing full well he isn’t helping his skritt impression, “they were a red-haired sylvari, with a really creepy wiggling staff? The thing is, I’m pretty sure they follow the Dragon. I accidentally put a foot through one of their minions and they took the opportunity to tell me at length how they’ve combined necromancy with jungle magic. I mean I know that sounds crazy because who would just say that? Like out loud, in public. That was back in Hoelbrak and no on really, um, listened to me. So I came here and eventually someone let me in.” Bardi tries for a disarming smile but it looks more like he put his foot through another minion.
—
Moryera had finished packing up her books and was about to leave when she overhears the description of the suspicious sylvari necromancer. “W-wait, you said red hair? Short, dark skin, really enthusiastic about a half-rotten looking plant creature? I know them, they were in the library last night!”
—
Osgar Nordwind’s features slowly harden, alarm settling in. He stands, bracing himself against the table as he reaches for the wall where his staff was leaned. “I remember too,” the scarred norn murmurs in agreement with Mory. “Bug-eyed twig asked me for limited-access research. Arms piled this high with books about dragons.” Os crosses the cobblestone floor and sighs heavily. “I should’ve taken the books right then and there.”
—
“Are you talking about me..?” The voice drifts down from above, sounding quiet, almost tentative. High up on a stone shelf, nearly hidden by the shadow of the oven and an assortment of pots and jugs, Alaois is perched, legs dangling over the edge. The sylvari gives each of them a chipper smile in turn, before focusing their eyes on Bardi. “I remember you, friend. You were so interested in my studies.”
—
Bardi’s mouth goes dry as that voice, all too fresh in his mind, drifts down to them. Why did Professor Nordwind choose this room? Why was that sylvari even here?? Overriding all of this was the thought, do not let this professor think you are in league with them. At the same time, if he crosses the sylvari one day he’d wake up with a slit throat, or as a minion. “Wh—‘interested’ is not the right word,” he says desperately, not sure who he’s pleading with.
—
Moryera, on the other hand, decides to go for the bold-faced lying approach. “N-no, I was in the library for a long time yesterday and it was definitely someone else, so you don’t need to worry.” The girl never would have made it in the Order of Whispers, however, and it’s immediately obvious that everything she just said in that tired, shaky voice was completely false.
—
Osgar Nordwind tenses, white-knuckled grip on his staff keeping him from staggering back in surprise. He fixes the familiar figure with his good eye, sweeping out an arm protectively in front of his smaller companions. “What’s your little friend talking about, kid?” he mutters in a low voice to Bardi, keeping the necromancer in sight. Mory’s quavering voice did her lie no favors, and Os moves his walking stick out at arm’s length, giving it a warning thump against the ground. “How long’ve you been spying up there?”
—
Alaois tilts their head slightly, gaze sliding from Bardi to Osgar. “Spying? I was sleeping…” They frown, sliding forward a few inches on the shelf and leaning forward. “It’s very cold here, you know?” Alaois pauses, giving each of the others assembled below another momentary look before adding, “why were you looking for me?”
—
Elias Bardizian sweats, and it’s not from standing by the fire. “They’re not talking about anything, ha ha ha. We just happened to meet in Hoelbrak earlier?” He tells Osgar, voice slightly higher than normal. “Just your regular, get-the-minion-off-my-foot things, y’know,” he adds, gesturing nervously. “Nothing like a ribcage wrapped around your ankle to start a great relationship.” He looks at Osgar with pleading eyes.
—
Moryera decides to keep her mouth shut this time, before she says anything that might anger the sapling she suspects could actually be of the Nightmare. Her eyes dart back and forth between their high perch, and her two companions. Surely Professor Nordwind knows what to do in this sort of situation… right?
—
After shooting Bardi a thoroughly disgusted look, Osgar peers back up at the sylvari and pushes his glasses back up his nose. “I never got your name, kid,” he begins calmly, his posture shifting from defensive to interested. He spares a quick glance over his shoulder at the bench and lowers himself back down with a quiet grunt. “Novices have dormitories, you know,” the norn continues, rubbing his knee. “No reason to be sleepin’ in the kitchen of all places.”
—
“Alaois.” The answer is brief, easily and openly offered. But at the mention of dormitories, the sylvari casts their eyes up toward the hall, looking for the first time slightly discomfited as they let out an uncertain “mmmm.” After a beat they simply offer, “it’s warmer here. And quieter,” before dropping their gaze back down to the others. “And it’s closer to the library, isn’t it?”
—
Despite not being one of the two people made of leaves, Bardi withers under Osgar’s baleful glare. Feeling distinctly uncomfortable with the whole situation, he questions why exactly his sense of civic duty had to reemerge right when he met Alaois. He could be anywhere right now, preferably somewhere not covered in snow, rather than being judged by a Priory Scholar who seems more interested in talking with the little bugger than actually detaining them, the hypocrite.
—
“You can’t go sleeping in the kitchen, though,” Moryera adds, the irony of her statement completely lost on her. “The stones get really hot near the hearth, and you could accidentally roll onto the hot part and poof! Roast vegetable. Not a good plan at all, you should probably come down from there.”
—
Osgar Nordwind pauses, fingers hovering in one place just below his kneecap. He stares at the floor silently and with mounting horror as his stomach twists at those words: “it’s closer to the library”. The haggard norn’s good eye flickers toward the fireplace. The bug-eyed little freak couldn’t really mean… “Look—Alaois,” he begins slowly, leaning forward and squinting at the sylvari. “Kids like you don’t get to wander around without supervision.” He narrows his eyes. “I’m moving you into a dorm. The scholars are going to make sure you stay there.”
—
Alaois’ gaze follows Osgar’s, just for a moment, and the ghost of a smile plays across their features before they focus on the conversation again. “It’s nice that you’re worried about me,” they say, mostly to Mory, “you don’t even know me. But…” They shift then, moving backward on the high shelf until they begin to slip out of direct sight, and there is the slight clatter of wood on stone that suggests the sylvari’s staff may have been tucked away in the shadows. “She’s just like me, you know. Why isn’t she being watched?”
—
“Because—“ Bardi has to bite back what he was going to say. Something along the lines of “You follow the Dragon and if you were given any info on it you’d probably defect, join the dragon, and kill us all?” Instead, he hikes a smile onto his face and peers into the shadowy corner where Alaois is perched. “Because she isn’t nearly as motivated as you are in your studies. If she doesn’t do in-depth research, then she won’t come across anything dangerous—to herself,” he adds hastily. “We don’t want you to find anything… dangerous.” He’s probably laying it on too thick.
—
“Th-that’s not true! I’m plenty motivated! I just don’t need to be supervised because I’m not a-“ what she had meant to say is ‘not a novice,’ but that would be a lie. Funny how her promotion exam was mysteriously, indefinitely postponed as soon as the Priory learned of the sylvari’s connection to Mordremoth. With all the pieces slowly coming together, she can hardly blame the professor for wanting to keep a possible agent of the Dragon out of the library… but what if Alaois was right? She’s a sylvari. Maybe she too has been the Dragon’s eyes in the Priory this entire time. The shadows from the fireplace begin to pool around Mory’s feet as she steps backward from the group and barks out a shaky “I’m NOT like you!”
—
Osgar Nordwind glances at Mory, alarmed by her sudden outburst. The norn hesitates and laces his fingers together in his lap, face grim. “You’re not,” he reaffirms sternly, offering her an understanding nod. “Honestly. If I operated on the idea that you were all an equal threat, neither of you cabbages would be standing here right now.” He leans back against the table, peering up at Alaois. “Don’t give me a reason to change my mind.”
(part 2>)