Issue 1 Downtime

It was some time after their last encounter, and certainly after Victoria had danced the night away, that Ms. McManus knocked on her door again.

Victoria opened the door and, seeing Sam, looked around. "Alone this time?"

"Aye. Just me, and for myself rather than him. Are you alright with that?"

"Oh, you have no idea how alright I am with that. Come in."

She stepped in, seeming a little more at ease.

"This is going to sound odd when I ask you, but I'm not certain what isn't, of late."

"Do you recall when you took a bit of my shadow?"

"I do," Victoria said. "You buggered out of here with Captain Oblivious, so I didn't have a chance to get it back to you. The extra time processing should have helped things, though, I'll admit..."

"I'm sorry. It just seemed if I had you both in the room we wouldn't get anywhere, and I trusted you when you said you needed to keep it awhile longer."

"I've just somewhat... felt its absence, since then."

Victoria seemed legitimately surprised by that. "Really, now? That's odd. You can have it back, obviously, it's just... odd."

"While I was in the other world, I had to tap into things I'd preferred not to before. Talking with Professor Weaver about it further led me to believe that perhaps I shouldn't have denied myself that previously."

"Since then it's been... an adjustment. I'm sensitive to things I haven't felt before."

"Ah... well, that would explain it. Aftereffect of having a spell used on you like that, I suppose. I wasn't expecting you to be sensitive to it." She reached around her neck and removed the crystal orb that was hanging on the chain around it.

"I'm sorry. It feels so bloody odd to try to explain it, and I'm already feeling a hypocrite for having told you before I'm not a goddess."

"Oh, did you? I don't recall that, maybe you're mistaken," Victoria said with a slight smirk as she passed her hand around the ball, shadow bubbling out of it and gathering in her hand. "I purged the sludge that passed for the scrying water a while after you left. This, though, I had a special job for."

"I rather thought you did. I may not give the best indication, but I do believe you when you say you know what you're doing."

"Well, at first I thought about fashioning it into a raven and having it lead us to that tree, but then I realized there was a better way to do this." The shadow pulsed in her hand as she gently made sure that it was all prepared. "There's a whole wealth of information a scrying gains. And we're sitting there just looking at it. The bloody difference between watching something and knowing it is so huge that it's almost comical. But since the scrying tool has all the information that I gained, like say, the location involved, and much more in-depth details than we can see, and that scrying tool has a link to one of us..." she looked up at Sam. "I'm not going to lie and say this won't sting a bit."

"...it's alright. Do it."

Victoria nodded.

She wasn't lying. It did sting. She smoothed the piece of Sam's shadow back into the rest of it, and Sam could feel the sting as the information of the scrying was pushed into her mind. She'd have to examine it, but she knew what was gained from the scrying, and what's more, she knew the things about it that couldn't simply be conveyed visually.

But she also wasn't lying in that it did only sting.

There was a reaction from Samantha, a brief shudder and a ruffling of feathers that perhaps indicated that it wasn't a dress.

"That certainly was... interesting."

"Oh, don't I know it," Victoria mused. "I'm sorry there isn't a more... comfortable way to get it done. The more of us who know parts of what the blazes is going on, though, the better." She sat down on the couch, rubbing her hands at the discomfort from having handled the shadow like that.

"Aye. Just more for me to get used to, but no trouble."

"I'm sorry if I've made your life more complicated of late as well."

"Mmm... really, I just think of it as side effects of my own rather horrible life choices. It's not your fault that someone raised that boy with some rather moronic views of magic."

"That's the trouble. His adoptive parents thought he was a mutant, from what he's told me. He's been doing things intuitively, experimenting."

"Or so he thought, at least. We may find out differently."

"Well, you do see how that could be quite the marvelous ploy to further the 'bring him into the Darkholders to further their purposes' idea, getting him to think nothing of the dangers of using magic. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled and all that."

"It's an angle. I don't know if it's the right angle, but it's certainly possible."

"Of course not. Nothing's certain. Well, aside from the fact that nothing seems to have impressed upon him just how bloody serious this all is other than 'something happened to mommy and daddy and I have a scar and some annoying control tendencies.'"

"He's still getting over having recovered that memory. It was a rather shocking one, and unfortunately it's pushing him to do exactly what the constructs in his mind feared he would."

"Shock is an excuse for immediate reactions. Not willful ignorance of what everyone smarter than you is telling you," Victoria pointed out. "I'm just saying that this is going to be... rather difficult. And there's a very likely chance that our greatest source of danger is not going to be someone living outside this school."

"...I'm aware of that, aye."

"...And I'm also not referring to myself."

"No, but he came to me for help, and all I helped was for him to remember the grisly, ritual murder of his birth parents. I'd rather do better by him than that."

"I really don't think you had much of a choice on that one," Victoria put in. "You said that the memories were coming back anyway, better that you knew about it to make sure he doesn't do something completely ridiculous. Which people inexperienced with magic are wont to do."

"Aye. The alternative was that he went completely mad in the process, and harmed himself or others."

"So I'll just stop mincing words and just say that he's probably going to be the greatest obstacle somewhere along the line."

"It's funny, I'm hearing almost the same thing from Professor Weaver of late."

"And that would be because she's smart. And can see the future."

"Aye, and my life is filled with bloody sorceresses," she said with a faint smirk.

"You have good taste?" Victoria offered.

"Perhaps, perhaps. Wouldn't trade it, at the least."

"Mmm. You're a braver person than most," Victoria mused. "I mean, the solstice rituals you'll get asked to take part in alone..."

"My slide into being distressingly pagan has begun in earnest," she chuckled.

"We'll have you in on the skyclad hedonistic rituals in no time," Victoria said, completely straight faced.