also you should write an au where barry as the red robe just talks like regular barry, so instead of being like "ARE YOU AFRAID" he's like "So, uh, are you guys... scared? At all?"
“So, uh, are you guys… scared? At all?” the lich asks, floating over the corpse of Captain Captain Bane.
“I don’t know,” Magnus wheezes, still making futile axe swings that pass right through him. “You did just kill a guy…?”
“We kill guys all the time,” Merle brags. “Get good, ghosty.”
Taako squints at the lich. His voice–and speech patterns–are so weirdly familiar. Someone who asked for an autograph at some point, maybe? Or a bureau member he didn’t bother to remember the name of?
Instead of expressing any of this, Taako says, “You’ve gotta up the spook factor if you want these beans freaked, my man. You’ve got this whole lich aesthetic and you’re wasting it on that voice.”
“H-Huh, yeah, maybe that would’ve been a good idea,” says the lich, and then more quietly, “Damn.”
“Also the guy you killed was trying to kill us,” Magnus adds. “So that’s points in favor of chill ghost.”
“O-Okay, just–fine. It’s not even me you’re s-supposed to be scared of, anyway. L-Listen.” The lich holds out his hand, and projections of familiar faces flicker across it. “Gundren, Brian, Jenkins, Sloane… this guy…” He gestures to the corpse instead of projecting Bane’s face. “Seemed like… sh-shitty folks, would you say?”
“Sloane was cool,” Magnus says, at the same time that Taako says, “Yeah, fuck Jenkins!”
Ignoring the other comments, the lich points at Magnus. “Yeah, th-that’s exactly it!”
Merle rolls his eyes. “Teacher’s pet.”
“You don’t have to be evil to, uh, want these,” the lich continues. “There’s this… th-there’s a want, a-a hunger, if you will. Makes these things–”
“Craveability,” Magnus says.
“Yeah, sure, that’s the one,” Barry says. His stupid speech is going completely awry. He really should’ve stuck to his cheesy-spooky script, for crying out loud. “It can’t b-be stopped, it just–it consumes everything, okay–”
“What does? The thrall? The relics make you want some doughnuts, is that what you mean?” Merle asks.
Taako adds, “I totally could’ve gone for some doughnuts when I was trying to use the sash earlier. Just sayin’. It was like, Taaaako, you want a billion pastries? And I was like, hell yeah, babe–”
“Christ, you tried to use the Sash?” the lich asks, dropping his barely-present character mask yet again. “Have a brain, Taako, you can’t get–”
“Oh, have a brain? Sorry I’m too simple of an idiot wizard for your ghost antics–”
The lich drags his hands down his skull, making a clattery-scrapey sound. “I-I’m leaving. Just keep in mind–just–this is your first lesson. See you later.”
Magnus stares at the spot where the lich was. “Oh, so definitely very schoolteacher, then.”
