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The only thing that sucks more than the Scholomance is not going to the Scholomance
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Uh. Hm. Well, they didn't have anything else planned, but she's amenable to trying whatever they'd like, if they'll front her the mana for it.

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There's some animated discussion between them until someone suggests freezing nitrogen right out of the air, which immediately becomes the favourite option of all present.

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... For good reason!!!! If that works then that could be a very cheap freezing spell! Yes, that, let's do that, forget fronting her the mana she'll do it on principle!! Uh, where should she do that, because this could get messy.

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A couple of seniors volunteer to climb up on a bench to get a metal cannister from a high shelf along the wall, just in case she can do it and they can store it. If they're allowed to keep the cannister afterwards, that is.

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Yes, sounds like a perfectly fair deal. They're the ones getting the thing, after all, and sticking their heads very close to a mysterious and possibly-dangerous ceiling. (And also so close to graduation, but she won't mention that.)

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So the first one climbs up, but before he can properly grab a cannister the next round of grinding vibrations hits, except this time it doesn't stop after a few seconds. It keeps getting worse and worse, almost as bad as graduation day, to the point where stuff starts falling off the shelves and even the stools start toppling over. The boy that had climbed up onto the bench jumps off it as soon as he can, grabbing for his friend's hand just as three of those cannisters come crashing down on the table, one of them popping open and spilling a writhing mass of baby copper-gnawers.

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The copper-gnawers aren't themselves much of a problem, but wizards are still perfectly vulnerable to things like 'being crushed.' Like, for example, by all of the things falling from up high. Time to vacate the premises, her bit of magically bent wood already scooped up into her satchel. Out everyone goes into the, comparatively, much safer hallway. And since she had been asked for a demonstration, and there are such tempting targets that shouldn't be allowed to reproduce, right here, trying to leap after them or something, well. Waste not, want not. Or something.

Nitrogen typically makes up almost eighty percent of the air that they breathe, and it's not particularly difficult to imagine the copper-gnawers suspended in a shell of liquid. And then once she's out of the room, she turns to face the room and chants the spell, quickly and easily as breathing. They do not freeze solid, exactly, but their mostly-copper carapaces crack apart at the sudden shift in temperature, which kills them just as well. Heh. Downside of being metal based.

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By the time she is done with them all pretty much everyone has already flead upstairs. With one obvious exception, who's waiting anxiously for her just outside.

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He is almost knocked over by one Scorpius Lake, who seems to be sprinting downstairs rather than up.

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....what the fuck?

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Yvette catches her boyfriend, or, well, steadies him to make sure he's not literally knocked over.

"You're running off to fight it," she observes, of Lake.

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Nope he's gone already.

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"...fight... 'it'?"

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"Pretty sure that rumbling wasn't just the school, and there's actually something monstrous that possibly beat its way up here." She gives a sigh. "Um. Do you mind if I...?"

She motions vaguely down the stairs after him. Implication being: going to follow him to make sure he doesn't die or something.

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"I'm coming with." That's his no-arguments tone of voice, again.

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"Yes, dear," she agrees, fondly. Then, yes, they can carefully and thoughtfully descend the stairs together to see what horrible thing has broken its way up from graduation hall. Together.

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The grinding gets a lot worse as they continue on downstairs, towards the senior res hall and below. The walls are literally humming, loudly, so loudly that even if they called out to Scorpius he probably wouldn't be able to hear at all. And there's no one else, here, because of course the seniors only go to their res hall at curfew anyway, this close to graduation, and otherwise spend most of their time either doing practice runs in the gym or studying tactics together. And after they get to their landing it's clear that Yvette was right: the source of the noise is definitely coming from the bottom of the stairs.

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And then another turn of the stairs later Scorpius comes flying back up towards them. Literally: it seems he's been thrown bodily through the air, smashing against a wall and falling almost at their feet, gasping. He stares up at them, looking confused—and even more exhausted than he did this morning—but then a gigantic jellyfish-translucent tentacle comes groping up around the corner, feeling for him.

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"Having some trouble?" quips Yvette, who sees a blindly grasping tentacle as something that looks like it needs to be stabbed. Conveniently, her athame still needs a test drive, so she can just step forward and give this tentacle a nice new piercing. Distantly, she notes that it sort of reminds her of the tentacles of the mal that must not be named, even though it's the wrong color, and more transluscent, and furthermore the tentacle has a bit more solid physicality to it. This causes her to grimace just a bit, and then stab it again, just so it knows she hates it on principle.

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The first stab makes the thing flinch and start to retreat and then the second actually cuts it which gives Alexei an opening to start trying to pull Scorpius to his feet and away from the creature.

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"No, let go, I have to," and he tries to wrench free and shake his light saber on—which does jack shit.

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Even if it did turn on, it wouldn't help. Groglers are really only weak to being frozen; it disrupts their gelatinous liquid nature in a way that heat doesn't. Even her athame, built to cut through magic itself, is just going to irritate it.

"Help it break more of the school? It's a grogler, you dumbass!!"

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"The fuck you mean it's a grogler, groglers don't grow this b—" He stops himself to dodge another tentacle swipe then looks at the severed tentacle and, "Oh shit it's a grogler," he says once he sees the telltale red filament inside that tentacle, which had been covered by the tentacle's unnatural thickness. "Fuck fuck freezing spell do I even have anything that'll deal with a grogler this big—"

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"For the love of...!" she mutters, and then she gives Alexei her athame. Scorpius could probably use it better, but she expects her blade to prefer the artificer over him. Besides, Scorpius is clearly not at his best right now. "I do. Mana."

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Alexei accepts the blade wordlessly and watches as the stump of the tentacle Yvette cut off starts sprouting four new friends to menace them with. Then he looks at Scorpius with a raised eyebrow.

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