PREP Highschool

[Halae]

[Mad Science Building]

"I can't read it. Passing my essence through it gave me the prophecy however; it explained that the world started as one, and will be returned to being one," Skye shakes her head, "Very normal cult things. It's not unusual for someone to find these sorts of thing and found a philosophy based on them, and then manipulate people into giving them their money."

[Keeper]

Apologies

”One or two similar themes does not mean they’re worthy of being conflated. My world was made by Absum, destroyer, sun and sky and Adea, creator, sea, and earth. Sure she does have the sea and chaos connotation but that doesn’t make her ANYTHING like the primordial darkness you’re describing besides basic thematics. What about the worlds that are created wholesale by gods and they don’t even worry about where the gods came from and what space is made of before Creation? What about the stories where they don’t care about creation itself? Or when reality is just a shattered version of a greater whole that used to be?” Kol shakes his head.
”This sounds like the thing they always poke at archaeologists for doing: forcing other cultures to fit into the box you’ve decided they fit into from your own perspective.”
Okay yeah he definitely passed that Narrative class better than he let on.

Bullying in Progress

”I’m Kol. And I reiterate that you oughtta let her go.”
There are some rumors about Kol. He’s the school’s luck dragon. They say if he breathes on you it’s seven years of bad luck! At least as much as ladders and black cats are. Pretty debatable.

[Rebonack]

[Apologies]

Khannie purses her lips at the rant.

What's his deal? Why does this idea bug him so much?

"Exceptions to the rule doesn't mean the rule is fake; they reinforce the rule. It's like... dogs are animals that have got four legs, right? BUT WAIT! Sometimes dogs are born with less legs! Or they get hurt so they lost one! It just means something unusual happened to make the exception. There are totally stories that haven't got the cosmic ocean or void or whatever but they're unusual, that what makes 'em cool and special." Khannie says. Then she thinks for a bit, trying to come up with a better way to spell this out. "Okay so, there are like... four different versions that I know of-"

She begins ticking off fingers.

"Cosmic ocean comes first. The first gods rise out of it and eventually the world gets made.

Gods and the cosmic ocean are both basically around since forever. The gods interact with each other or with the ocean or both, and the world gets made there. That story's usually got opposites. Light and darkness, fire and ice, chaos and order, that sorta thing. But not all of 'em! There's one where a god stirs the sea with a spear and the world appears outta the foam."

The spear in that story may or may not represent a dick. That happens a lot in these stories.

"A god is eternal and CREATES the cosmic ocean, then forms the world outta that and makes other gods or whatever. That one isn't super common, usually the cosmic ocean is eternal too.

And the last one is, like, a god is the ONLY thing that exists and distinctions are an illusion. Maybe the world's a dream or a prison or whatever but usually in those ones people have gotta realize the truth and escape."

Does any of that matter?

Well... it matters to Khannie. She thinks it's cool! And getting told it's useless wrangling is kinda irritating.

"It isn't exact 'cuz people make up stories! But you can use the similarities to kinda track where ideas come from. What stuff gets passed down and what stuff gets changed. You can try puzzling out the history of the histories, it's cool," Khannie insists.

And definitely NOT dumb.

Anyway! This is about the time that several OTHER very realistic looking paintings catch Khannie's eye. "...wait are those more world painting things?"

[[brackets lover]]

[Bullying in Progress]

"Technically you never said that I oughtta. You said that I will, which is a prediction. Oughtta is a suggestion," Asami says in an uncharacteristicly smart-ass way. "She has a point there- _ow," the halfling agrees feeblishly.

Nevertheless, Asami sighs annoyedly and releases the headlock from the other student but keeps the finger in the ear, leaving the girl to wince in discomfort and pull her own head away. Now freed, the halfling hurries away quickly.

Now alone with Kol, Asami giggles amusedly. "You know I didn't even plan on holding them that long until you distracted me," says Asami teasingly.

[Morty]

[Mad Science Building]

"As prophecies go, it's a pretty vague one." Hiep's comment is casual. And maybe odd from a janitor. After all, what can she know? But then, she's a janitor in PREP of all places. Not surprising she'd have unusual interests and insights. "I wonder what this tablet's previous owner was looking for."

[Rebonack]

[Mad Science Building]

The definitely normal janitor asks a really good question.

"The physical manifestation of a god's corpse," Khannie says, her eyes narrowing at the letters appearing on the scroll in front of her. "The tower wizard thought the tablet's some kinda... map? Or formula? To try to find it."

She wrinkles her nose a bit.

"Wait, no, not A god. THE god. I guess from the whole everything came from one idea? He definitely found SOMETHING 'cuz the monsters in that tower were absolutely not friendly."

Not even a little bit!

"Hold on a sec, I think I've got his translation of the tablet in here. Umm...

'True, without falsehood, certain, and most true: What is below is like what is above, and what is above is like what is below, to accomplish the miracles of one thing. And as all things were derived from one by the meditation of one, so all things are born from this one thing by adaptation. The Sun is its father, the Moon is its mother, the Wind has carried it in its belly, its nurse is the Earth. The father of all amulets of the whole world is here. Its power is whole if it is converted into Earth. You will separate the Earth from the Fire, the subtle from the dense, gently and with great skill. It ascends from Earth to Heaven, and then it descends again to Earth, and receives the power of the superiors and the inferiors. Thus, you will have the glory of the whole world; and all darkness will flee from you. This is the strong force of all forces, overcoming every subtle thing and penetrating every solid thing. Thus, the world was created. From this, marvelous adaptations will arise, of which the manner is here. Therefore, I am called Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. What I have said about the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended.'

"..."
"...."
"....."
"Yeah I got no idea what that is. It sounds like... I dunno... an alchemical formula or something?"

[Halae]

[Mad Science Building]

"Not quite the same prophecy I received, but like I told you, it's standard cult garbage. There's always an apocalypse, there's always a special divinity, there's always actions you have to take to make the apocalypse happen and you'll become some kind of super being at the end of it," Skye says drily, clearly fully unimpressed with this thing. She's encountered way too many objects of this sort in the past, though this one is certainly higher quality than usual.

[Keeper]

Apologies

"Okay. That isn't at all what you just said. What you said before is 'everything is always about the dreamheart.' Now you're making a completely different point.'" Kol insists.
Maybe he's offended because Khannie was suggesting that his mother and the primordial darkness that spawned all faeries are functionally the same thing.
And then a distraction!

"Uh yeah. One of them is Mom's hut so I can visit her. Not that I'm planning to do that particularly often. Uh, if I didn't tell you, she also made it so that Braeg can't touch me directly. So that's nice. But yeah, the other one is...a copy of another world she made." Uh, why did he suddenly stop making eye contact?

Bullying in Progress

"And you wouldn't have been holding her at all if you chose not to. Don't you put the blame on someone else." Kol says, tilting his head. He doesn't seem moved by Asami's attempted use of semantics.

[[brackets lover]]

[Bullying in Progress]

"Yeah, that's the thing though. I wanted to hold her. I was the one who actually succeeded at my goal here, this was a w for me and an L for you," says Asami, snickering afterward. She smiles carelessly at Kol again before turning her her back on him, flashing a peace sign. "Anyways, smell ya later, dork." With that being said, Asami begins skipping down the halls in order to return to her dorm room. Unfortunately, she just insulted a god of luck and is heading right towards a corner, not paying attention to her surroundings. Anything could be coming around that corner right now for Asami to smack into. Another student, the janitor carrying a cart of supplies, or god forbid, a snowman.

[Rebonack]

[Apologies]

Khannie wrinkles her nose at that accusation.

"No, I said lotsa cosmogonies have something like the Dreamheart in it. Not all of 'em. It obviously isn't exactly the same 'cuz all the details don't match. Like I know my friend Skye came through somewhere LIKE the Dreamlands but it definitely wasn't the Dreamlands. Honestly I don't think my darkness magic is even all coming from the same place 'cuz the place the Fox came from has got the Dreamheart and the place my mother's from has got something called Discordia. Look, maybe I just didn't say what I meant right. So sorry about that?"

She honestly has no idea what's got Kol so worked up over all of this. It feels like he's just trying to be contrary. Maybe just apologizing is the best route because she clearly offended him somehow.

Anywho!

Khannie purses her lips. "...I would be lying if I said I wasn't curious about your mom. She honestly sounds a lot like my mother. It's eerie."

She catches something about the third painting. She doesn't know exactly what it is that's got Kol on edge there but something else is definitely bugging him. Something about someone else his mom created, maybe?

[Keeper]

Apologies

"It's fine. Just remember that these aren't just stories to some of us."
"Mom is nice. Just...ditzy. And when a billion people are depending on you, that's bad. And she also thinks there's good in Braeg, so that probably tells you all you need to know about her judgement skills."
Yeah that's...not a great sign for her.

Bullying in Progress

Kol exhales loudly in Asami's direction. Everything is fine. She definitely didn't just get hexed with 24 hours of bad luck.
As luck would have it, Asami runs directly face-first into the soft chest of Macan, local seeq mage student, who was coming around the corner after opening his student uniform jacket. He rubs where her face hit awkwardly.
"You know, I'm starting to think I'm getting more popular with how often this keeps happening."

[Rebonack]

[Apologies]

There are a number of things Khannie doesn't like.

One of them is people responding with something to the effect of 'it's fine' when she apologizes. She's admitting that she did something wrong so obviously it wasn't fine. But she bites her tongue on this one. Now definitely isn't the time.

"If she isn't really paying attention wouldn't it make more sense to make these places... I dunno... self-sufficient or whatever? Like, have rules that the world will follow without you doing anything?" Khannie wonders aloud. That seems like it would be an easy way to avoid this problem.

She's still curious.

Which leads to an obvious question.

"So are these paintings just windows or at they like the painting portals in Super Mario Sixty-Four?"

An important question.

[quillpleasant]

[A!A Field Trip]

"Your assessment is correct," the machine says through Khannie. "This unit has limited control over the facility. The cell storage and processing chamber is currently blocked due to malfunctioning cleaning equipment. This unit will deactivate the cleaning equipment to make this path accessible."

Oh hey.

Sounds like our heroes figured out what they need to do to shut the acid mist down.

Just required one of them to get ear-wormed by a computer.

Then suggestions happen! "Your concern is unnecessary. This unit is able to defend itself while the data processing continues. Reducing your numbers will reduce your chances of success. Designate 'Khannie' expresses her appreciation that your are concerned for her well-being."

Well, our heroes could still leave somewhere here if they wanted to. But in the mean time the way forward is now open to them. Khannie definitely doesn't look comfortable. She's standing there very stiffly, raised pink veins visible under her skin spreading out from where the wax made contact with her.

Well, this situation is very scary, even if the machine is telling the truth. But standing around debating it isn't going to get them anywhere. It's time to put the Action! in the archeology.

"Alright, let's go," says Darko, stepping forward, "We're protagonists, right? I don't think that Khannie's story is going to end because of a random wax machine, so I'm trusting that she'll be okay until we get back. Mat, if you want to stay here you can, but either way, I'm going."

And with that, he heads back to the formerly inaccessible room. Time to find the macguffin, solve the puzzle, and rescue the prin- the unicorn. Rescue the unicorn.

[Keeper]

Apologies

"Yeah, her painted worlds are self-sufficient now. Apparently she found out how to call other gods to make sure that eyes are kept on it when hers aren't. Which of course she learned she had to do after she let one of them die."
Yup. He's still mad about it.
Kol's eyes flick to Khannie. Then the paintings. Then Khannie. Then the paintings. Kol takes a deep breath.
"The copy is just a painting. The other two can be used as portals. But that's not something we can just do. We could break a whole civilization by meddling with it!"

[Rebonack]

[Apologies]

I mean.

Khannie's with him on that one.

She's kinda mad about it and it wasn't even HER world. Just the one her boyfriend came from and got horribly cursed thanks to someone's erratic behavior. It's... weird.

It seems like some gods are basically just... regular people. Or whatever. Extremely powerful regular people. And others are just like something totally different. Of course there wouldn't be any consistency there but whatever.

"I wasn't really thinking meddling. I'm just... I was thinking it might be cool to talk to your mom? I've got questions about god stuff because of... uh... reasons."

You know.

Reasons!

Khannie hasn't exactly been subtle that her own mother is something not wholly unlike Kol's. She just hasn't connected the dots there.

[Earl of Purple]

Outside Class- Hunters

"If that were true, you'd not be here. Everyone attending PREP is great, in one way or another." Although not necesserily helpful to Asami's self-confidence, if she's as great as everyone else. That's still, however, greater than those going elsewhere.

"When this runs out of juice or fills up with bad mojo. I empty it when I can, of the bad mojo anyway. No way to refill the magic, that I know of anyway. Bad mojo fills it quicker than the magic drains out, which is handy, but... Also kind of not handy at all." Agate lifts her orange-red soul gem as she talks, showing off the jewelled pendent. There's some cloudiness to it, as it's filling already. Agate should try emptying it soon.

A!A Field Trip

"Fine, I'll go with the others. But if I come back and Khannie's been turned inside out and used to decorate this room with blood, I'm going to leave and come back with all the magnets I can find and slapping them to everything." Machines don't like magnets, right? Mat's digital watch doesn't, anyway, though she's not yet been willing to muck around with her phone and a magnet. Phones are more fragile and harder to repair.

[Keeper]

Apologies

”Um. We can I guess. She’s really nice besides…the thing. Which if you want to talk to her about that I wouldn’t bother. I’ve already yelled at her about it and it wasn’t even satisfying.”

The Thing is a pretty big deal to be fair. But Adea is paradoxically unchanging. Kol is simultaneously still mad about it but also doesn’t think there’s any point of continuing to mention it to her.

[Rebonack]

[Apologies]

"I didn't want to talk to her about the thing," Khannie reasons as she approaches the SWAMP SHACK painting. "If she's anything like my mother she probably can't help it. Critters like that can't not be what they are, even if what they are sucks."

No.

She wants to ask about something else. Or rather, some THINGS else.

"So... how does this work? Do I just crawl through this thing like it's an open window or whatever?" Khannie inquires.

[Keeper]

Apologies

There’s a horrible sound and then there’s a big dragon standing beside Khannie.
”Khannie, you can’t see my mother in anything but style. Climb on. Also the swamp sucks and walking is going to get you fallen into every single bog on the path. So flying is mandatory.”
Of course Khannie might have gotten her own means of flying by now. The Fox is certainly spoiled for choice in that regard.

[Rebonack]

[Apologies]

Khannie can't actually do the not-quite-shapeshifting that the Fox does.

That is completely the Fox' domain. She can do the human illusion for herself. The one that feels and seems real. But anything else just doesn't seem to... stick. For lack of a better word. And Khannie can't just bring the Fox out without being asleep herself, holiday magic aside.

All this means she doesn't have access to flight. Just some cool shadow tricks but by definition those are restricted to surfaces.

What she can do, however, is blush really hard when Kol assumes his dragon form. And blushes even HARDER when he tells her to ride him. She makes an indistinct ungulate noise in response to this, which does not help the situation and all, and awkwardly climbs onto the dragon's back.

Wwwwhhhyyyyyy?

[Keeper]

Apologies

Kol doesn’t get what Khannie’s issue is. She’s been pretty up front about her thinking he’s handsome but not LIKING him the way she likes Arthfael. And that’s okay. Kol had some awkward things since he really likes Mary but then Mary made it into a crush but they talked about it so that solved the problem right?

So really it should be maybe a little awkward but not this big deal Khannie always makes it.

Anyway the painting isn’t nearly big enough to fit Kol’s head let alone all of him, and yet he jumps forward and both of them vanish without any issue.

[Morty]

[Mad Science Building]

"Never heard of a god leaving a corpse before..." Meanwhile, Skye sure knows a lot about demon cults. And since she's pretty clearly from Creation... she must have dealt with them as a mortal too. She can't have been Exalted for very long. Sounds more and more like she's from close to home. Bizarre. "In my experience, fumbling this sort of thing leaves as much of a mess as succeeding, sometimes. And a ton of cleanup. But that's for us simple folk, not great sorcerers."

[Rebonack]

[Mad Science Building]

"Really?" Khannie perks up at that comment from Mai. "There's a buncha stories about gods leaving bodies behind. Some of 'em are about the god's body being used to make the world. I think that might be what the guy from the tower was on about? It sounds like he thinks this one god is the only thing that exists so obviously all the stuff would have to be made outta him, too. But if he's the world then why would there be a corpse somewhere?"

That sure is the question, isn't it?

And arguably the question the Irises of Eternal Night were meant to help answer.

[[brackets lover]]

[Outside Class - Hunters]

Asami listen intently with a deathly seriousness as Agate explains the soul gem. "Why do you use your magic as your main way of fighting then? You could just... summon demons to fight for you, or something," says Asami plainly as if its an obvious solution, "What's bad mojo, though? How does it fill up with it?" Asami stares at the gem and frowns as she notices the cloudiness. She can certainly make it out as something "bad" with her spiritual sense. Determined, Asami holds a hand out as her divine energies flow into the gem and attempt to dispel the cloudiness, breaking down its magicules into simpler forms, such as the ambient magic present in the environment.

[New Friend Meeting]

The soft chest harmlessly pushes Asami back, causing her to giggle. "_{So chubby...}" She pauses awkwardly to get a look at who she just bumped into. "Hi, Asami desu. Do you wanna have a conversation?" she asks politely.

[Keeper]

New Friend Meeting

”Thank you! I work hard to stay that way.”
The chubby student in question is a rotund piggy sort of fellow with a vaguely mustard-esque skin tone and a uniform top a couple sizes smaller than it should be so he wears it as a vest. He’s also got a big hat and a saber. He was actually an old favorite target for the bullying club…until he started wearing a sword everywhere. It intimidated the kids who used to cast grease on him and stuff him into lockers.
”Hullo Asami. I’m Mac. But you probably knew that. Your…associates aren’t here with you are they?”

[[brackets lover]]

[New Friend Meeting]

Asami isn't remotely intimidated by him. Or any student, really. "Don't think so," she says, Mac's trepidation not concerning her, "Don't remember meeting you, either."

[Keeper]

New Friend Meeting

”Oh, good. Well, you prob’ly don’t remember meeting me because we haven’t. I just keep up with some clubs you know. But you’re not in the theater or fencing club which is why you’ve never met me. Glad we could get that fixed.”
Which is a polite way of saying he monitors the club that used to bully him a little bit.

He doffs his hat momentarily, which proves that the little spike sticking out of the top is in fact part of his head.

[[brackets lover]]

[New Friend Meeting]

Asami shoots Mac a bright smile. "Oh, are you interested in the bully club? Its really fun. You should try attending one of our meetings."

[Halae]

[Mad Science Building]

"Nothing stops a powerful enough divinity from co-locating, being in multiple places at once," Skye answers, "Their soul simply has to be powerful enough to allow such. Additionally, if the world is made out of his body, then it stands to reason that you can make divinities in miniature that represent some small piece of him, like the higher demons of Malfeas."

"Where did you find this, again? I wouldn't mind looking into it. Though we'd need to get faculty involved, as I'm not supposed to do that sort of thing without supervision, as I'm not part of the archaeology studies," Skye looks pointedly at "Mai". Perhaps she could convince the Janitor to do this for her.

[Keeper]

New Friend Meeting

Mac, to his credit, manages to keep his tusked smile as if he isn’t low-key horrified.
”Oh no, my Theatrics and Heroics courses are mutually exclusive to bully club activities. Besides, Ms. Baz would be quite sick of me if I was in more than one of her clubs.”
So it seems he knows Aiko. That’s probably unsurprising. Aikobaz is in a lot of clubs.