And he raises his hand and begins to cast -

- And Luthien - 

- Yanks his mana out - doesn't stop at the snippy threat she gave earlier - pulls and pulls and pulls - 

Orion Lake had a lot of mana.

Luthien Higgins now has a lot of malia, and also a corpse lying in her doorway.

It's too much - 

A spell - she doesn't even know which, a clear focused burning intent of just fuck all this - rips out of her, through her open door - through the walls - 

A shockwave tears apart her hallway, thin flickers of roaring hungry mortal flame shoved out - landing and clinging everywhere they can - and then taking hold, and starting to grow -

And then the screaming starts. 

Which is, by the by, exactly when Jacky decides is a great time to kiss Luthien on the mouth, moaning and wiggling and apparently totally heedless of the knives buried in both of them. 

- ?!?!

...Jacky actually isn't a bad kisser...

...No. Focus. 

Luthien heals the knife wound in her gut with a powerful wave of malia, spilling out to all her other cuts - then to Jacky's wounds as well - 

- Disappointed whine! 

She undoes that a little by punching Jacky in the stomach, then shoving her back and shouting, "What is wrong with you?!"

"Nothing!" Wiggle wiggle. "That was the hottest thing I've ever seen."

She - can't help it. She snorts, and then starts laughing helplessly, as some extremely hot mortal flame roars around them. 

She'd expected drawing malia to feel like drawing sludge through her veins. That's what it felt like in maleficers. Grimy. Sick.

That's not what it feels like now. It feels like a drug, like a powerful buzz, like she imagines drinking must feel. 

It feels an awful lot like wanting to kiss a pretty girl, who just might want to kiss her back. 

'Might just' more like 'will kiss her whether she wants it or not.'

Jacky starts taking off her very tattered and bloody shirt, saying - "There's so much more in this school, you should take everything - take me - "

"Are you asking me to kill you or have sex with you?"

"Either!" Kiss!

- And Luthien doesn't push her away - and she can't help but think that this school is full of quite a lot of everything, and it could be all hers, and if she doesn't start taking first then the school will call a tribunal and she'll lose so she might as well jump ahead - 

There's over a thousand little lights around her. Over a thousand terrified beating hearts. And they could be hers. 

- Which is, more or less, exactly when a pipe above them groans and gives way and dumps a holy fuck shit number of mals on their heads. 

- Oh come on. 

Excuse you school Jacky was having a moment here. 

She still has her knives now, and more malia than she did before she went into Luthien's room - Jacky, for one, isn't going down without a fight. 

And Luthien's reached for malia for the first time ever - 

And is quickly figuring out why everyone's so scared of her. Her carefully hoarded mana stores are a drop next to this, and the mals attacking them have her on her back foot, unable to get enough of a breath to yank the life out of all the students around them - not when she's so new to it - 

But this is still far more than she's ever had in her life, and - her control isn't reduced at all, which means she can wield it to very devastating effect. 

This dorm hall is going to get very, very wrecked.

Jacky fortunately is experienced enough at drawing malia to grab some from their terrified - wounded - dying classmates, even while being pretty fiercely attacked. 

She'll even share some with Luthien, if they get an opening.

She flinches the first time - sends a quick look at Jacky - nearly gets taken out for her efforts - she recovers, though. Gets her equilibrium back. 

Not too bad at all. 

Which is precisely the point where the ground vanishes under them, opening into a deep, wide pit into an inky darkness.

Yeah she can't do anything about that especially with all these mals attacking her fucking damn school -

Gravity asserts itself, and Luthien begins to fall. 

Yeah she's not nothing except 'more murder', except they're very quickly out of the range of anyone who isn't the two of them or a mal. And she can't, actually, draw malia from mals. Yet but her window to learn is rapidly closing.