FIRE DRILL!, Outside the Dorms, Friday Night into Saturday

[endsthegame]

It started around midnight. Big, purple globs of grape jello, raining down from the sky. Jello drenched the bricks, the emo garden up on the roof, and every window that happened to be on the wrong end of the wind.

An hour later, the dorm sirens began blaring.

By then, the lawn was already coated in a thin layer of jello, and it did not look like the weather had any intention of letting up.

[[ FIRE DRILL! open to all students! ]]

Comments

[rebelseekspizza]

"Poor girl," Dante said. "I'll bet kings are assholes." Beat. "And not in the good way."

[vrajna_kralis]

"'Tis a good thing she's an anguisette, then," Hya said, shrugging. "She derives pleasure from suffering of all kinds. Though I misdoubt Ganelon will be calling for her. Who knows will he survive until Phedre finishes her training. Then, mayhaps, she will serve a queen instead."

[rebelseekspizza]

"So she's some kind of... super-masochist?" Dante parsed. "Huh."

Sorry, Hya. He wasn't quite the conversationalist you were.

[vrajna_kralis]

Of course not. Hyacinthe was (half) D'Angeline.

"A creation of Lord Kushiel, one of Blessed Elua's Companions and the punisher of those condemned by One God, if you believe that kind of thing," Hyacinthe said lightly.

By which he meant, he believed utterly, but didn't expect anyone not from Terre D"Ange to understand. Phedre's true nature had not been understood by the Dowayne of Cereus house, how could it be so by an outsider?

"When the angel of pain and punishment touches a mortal, 'super-masochist' is perhaps an understatement."

[rebelseekspizza]

Yeah, the look on Dante's face made it clear he was kind of weirded out by this one.

"The angel of pain and punishment," he echoed dubiously. "Must've been a Catholic."

He rubbed the back of his neck. "So, what, an angel woulda come down from heaven just to-- damn, that's weird."

[vrajna_kralis]

Hyacinthe laughed again. "Nay, nay, not like that," he assured Dante. "She was born with a scarlet mote in her eye. To the Houses of the Night Court, such a flaw made her imperfect, unfit to serve. But Anafiel Delaunay knew what such a mark meant and bought her contract from Cereus House, declaiming the verse that named her for what she was. Mighty Kushiel of rod and weal/Late of the brazen portals/With blood-tipp'd dart, a wound unhealed/Pricks the eyen of chosen mortals. She is as she was made."

[rebelseekspizza]

"I am never gonna wrap my head around your world, am I?" Dante said. "I mean. Besides the holy hookers part. That one's great."

[vrajna_kralis]

"'Tis a very simple world!" Hyacinthe protested with a laugh. "A thousand years ago, after the forces of Tiberium withdrew, Terre D'Ange was founded by the grandson of the One God and some rebelling angels and because of that, they're prettier, smarter, and more poetic than everyone else in the world. And random things crop up every few generations, like anguisettes and a ruling family with purple eyes. All very normal."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Mine's just got demons and a city nobody on this Earth seems to know about," Dante said, waving vaguely towards the mainland. "You're making us look normal."

Oh honey you didn't know the half of it.

[vrajna_kralis]

Literally did not know the half.

"Oh? What, most people aren't descended from angels?" Hyacinthe teased. "I'm not sure about you, my friend. You look like someone robbed the Night Court's cradles and ran off with you."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante snickered. "Yeah, no," he said, "Not descended from angels. Or born a fancy hooker. Sorry. I get it naturally."

[vrajna_kralis]

"Funny, because the mark on your back could easily have been a marque--though the symbol doesn't fit any of the Night Court's canons. Though, not every Servant of Naamah is in the Night Court. The rest of us need access to 'holy hookers,' too, I suppose." He snickered. "So tell me of this city that no one else has. Is it simply not known by another name, the way Terre D'Ange is called France in this world?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"Don't know how I got the mark."

That was all Dante had to say about that, though.

"Anyway, I'm from Limbo City. It's on the East Coast, near New York City? But people here don't know it. It's like the whole city just doesn't exist."

[vrajna_kralis]

"I know even less than most," Hyacinthe admitted. "I earned my keep and then some my first letter back to Delaunay when I told him there was another continent far across the waves. So your Limbo City, New York City, and East Coast are all equally mysterious to me."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante shrugged faintly. "We're on the East Coast," he offered. He gestured towards the... he thought that was the east side of the water, anyway. "That way's the ocean. New York's north of here."

[vrajna_kralis]

"I'd never seen the ocean, not till I came here," Hyacinthe said, turning a bit to face in the direction Dante pointed, not that he could see through the trees and the dark and the continuing fall of jello. "The City of Elua is far from the coast and I'd never left."

He'd barely ever left his own neighborhood, truth be told.

[rebelseekspizza]

"I grew up by it," Dante said. He dropped his arm and shrugged. "Maybe I'm lucky all I had to do to get here was move down the coast."

[vrajna_kralis]

"As opposed to learn a new language, jump across worlds, and forward about a thousand years in time?" Hyacinthe asked with a small smile. "'Tis possible you had less adjusting than I, which I envy."

Another thick chunk of jello spattered across Hyacinthe's bare chest with an audible splat! He stared at it for a long while before saying, "Let me be clear, I do not believe your arrival was without an adjustment period of your own."

Sigh.

[rebelseekspizza]

You know, Dante was going to be a nice guy and wipe some of that jello off Hyacinthe's chest. He was a giver like that.

"Loads of weird shit going on here," he agreed. "Though nothing's tried to stab us in over a semester, I'm gonna call it good."

Well. 'Us'.

[vrajna_kralis]

He was a giver that way, he truly was. And Hyacinthe appreciated it, or so the flash of a grin in the darkness implied.

"Is that something else I should be aware of?" Hyacinthe asked. "Being stabbed at? I can say with all honesty that I far prefer other activities to fighting."

[rebelseekspizza]

"If you're worried, just get behind me," Dante said, only half-joking. "But yeah. We got some creatures that tried to turn us into them back in spring. They got all stabby with tentacles and shit."

[vrajna_kralis]

"Don't be surprised if I take you up on that," Hyacinthe said, not joking. He was handy with a knife, but he knew better than to think that somehow a few fights and fancy moves made him any kind of warrior. "I promise to admire you appropriately after the fighting is over."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante snorted softly. "Sure," he said. "I've seen worse than what we got. Most people around here... not so much."

He wasn't going to go into what worse meant, but at least he felt comfortable enough to say that much. Considering.

[vrajna_kralis]

Hyacinthe took his words at face value. After all, Skaldic raids across the border had been a fact of life since before he was born. He vaguely remembered hearing about the Battle of the Three Princes, that had brought Terre D'Ange some breathing room at the cost of the life of the heir to the throne, Prince Rolande, leaving behind his elderly parents to look after his young daughter. Violence happened every day, did it not?

"Whereas I've dealt with little worse than angry guards and bored gangs," Hyacinthe said, nodding. "No one would ever mistake me for a fighter."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Guess we'll have to work on your sword handling," Dante said, winking.

He didn't want to linger on the violent stuff for too long.