cuzn
lucid luciel
[WP] You were hated even by the Teachers in the Magic School. One day you were given the Assignment to go through the Dark Forest, which was infested with Monsters and Eldritch Horrors. You accepted your death and went into the forest, but after hearing your story the Eldritch Horrors take you in.
Prompt by u/derDunkelElf
The Arcadian Academy for the Magically-Gifted was the very definition of the word 'elitist' in the magical community; it was a miracle that Jasmine had even been accepted, considering her less-than-appealing resumé. Orphaned, no prior schooling, self-taught in the ways of Old Magic through ancient grimoires and texts instead of in the standard New World Vernacular spells and religions; she even spoke in an accent not particularly favored by the upper society. The last trace remaining, save for her appearance, of her obvious Dökkálfar heritage.
Apparently, she had impressed the examiners enough with her magical talent alone to get into the school regardless of every other apparently-undesirable trait listed, but by the time the end of the first term had rolled around, any type of awe at her prodigious skill was quickly replaced by much less favorable feelings towards her character.
It made sense, in a cynical type of way, as to why the instructors would look the other way when a few troublemaking students would throw her bookbag into the courtyard fountain, or why no staff member seemed to care—or even disagree—when she was called a 'witch' or a 'heretic'. The Academy was focused on appearances more than it was any actual depth, and in general, it wasn't good for appearances when one of the highest-scoring students wouldn't spend her time smiling and waving, and would instead be poking around in the closed-off sections of the library that housed information on the darker forms of sorcery.
In particular, necromancy.
There was nothing truly wrong with it, if the conversation would ever be able to move past the annoyance of the 'ethics issue'. It was just as valid a magic form as any, but because it looked frightening to those of the weak-minded majority who would feel greatly uncomfortable with the idea of their own mortality as a conversation subject, it was heresy. And because she had found fascination in this 'heresy' when no other instructor or professor could pique her interest in their dozens of classes on how to make rocks float or transmute water into wine, she was now a heretic.
The punishment given to her was sneaky, it was two-faced, like a venomous snake lying in wait in a bed of dandelions. It was also just the type of punishment that illustrated perfectly the character of the school's Ljósálfari headmaster. A special assignment, just for her and nobody else, to venture into the depths of the Wilds and bring back the 'unicornis lilium' for further study which, aside from being very clearly a made-up flower, was Old Tongue for 'unicorn lily'. It read like a children's fairy-tale. Did they think that she was some type of idiot?
Jasmine was honestly more insulted by this than she was by the mention of the Wilds. Sure, entrance into the Wilds was forbidden by high elven (Ljósálfar, pure-born, or, the aristocrats and politicians of the elven caste system) law, but she wasn't the least bit frightened.
Actually, it was by this that she was honored. For them to go to the trouble of sending her to the Wilds, where she had no hope of returning alive, they must truly be frightened of her abilities, or of the liability that she posed to the very fabric of the Academy's inner politics. It was always about politics, really. "Practice heresy, and you get sent to the Wilds, where the trees themselves are said to devour mortal flesh. Remember this, students. Now go and move your rocks, leave the fun magic for the heretics to practice in their disgusting little witch covens."
Of course, Jasmine would rather not go, and she would rather not die if given the choice, but if the choice was either to die or to submit to that bastard headmaster's ridiculous prejudice, she would happily become a martyr for the cause. And who knew? Maybe the Wilds wouldn't be filled with cannibals and wendigos and the like. Maybe the pattern of the forest and the positioning of each tree didn't shift ever-so-slightly each time you closed your eyes. Maybe, maybe...
No. No maybes. Jasmine steeled herself, obstinate in the face of the winding woods and their creaking branches. She was here now, and the full moon had reached her peak in orbit above Gaia's surface. There was no more time for psyching herself up, no more hesitation.
With a sharp intake of breath, and a light tug at the strap of her single leather pack, she crossed the cobbled street, pushed herself over the wooden fence border, and crossed the threshold into what was either certain death or a new, world-changing discovery.
Somewhere, or, everywhere, something watched from the shadows, and whispers passed with the breeze that rattled the branches on bare, dead trees. Whispers that sounded like laughter.
"Now, if I were a unicorn lily, where would I be?" I can't believe I'm even humoring this. Jasmine soured at the thought that such a thing might exist, and soured even more at the thought that it didn't, and that she likely seemed like the biggest idiot on this side of the Emerald Isles for even bothering to look. The only thing frightening about this forest so far was how completely boring it was. There weren't even any birds. Just wind, and leafless trees, and cracking branches under her boots. This was a complete waste of her time.
"A unicorn lily... Really! Do they think I'm that stupid? It's obvious that they just want to get rid of me, so the least they could do is admit it!" In her frustration, she stomped down on a branch much harder than she normally would have, and the sound of dry wood snapping into splinters echoed thrice in the foggy emptiness. It was the type of emptiness, that heavy kind of silence, that made one shrink back in shyness the moment they spoke. It was so quiet that even her breathing, even her heartbeat sounded deafeningly loud, and the sound of every footstep was growing increasingly obnoxious.
After hours of walking, there had been absolutely no change in scenery. It was as if she was walking through a tunnel, with walls of trees and a cover of thick white fog to keep her from peering ahead too far. Every tree in this place seemed to be of the same species, and even though it was the peak of midsummer, they grew no leaves. They were dead, all of them—her necromantic studies have taught her to at least sense that much. They had likely been dead for a long time.
Jasmine would admit that it was odd for them to have remained dead, though. At first, she thought to herself that blocking off a place as supposedly dangerous as the Wilds with a wooden fence that even a toddler could bypass was completely idiotic, but perhaps the barrier ran deeper than the sub-par fencing. On one side, grass grew lush and emerald green, dotted with shamrocks and dandelions and everything sunny and cheerful, and on the other, everything looked to be in some manner scorched, and the trees were all dead, and the ground was littered with fallen branches and not a single leaf or blade of grass to be found. Even the dirt here felt infertile and dry, although Jasmine knew that it had rained only two nights ago.
This place was... Strange. Even though it was almost too quiet to talk, she didn't like staying silent for very long. It only took her an hour to discover that the longer she remained silent, the louder the silence became, and the harder to break, and if she stayed completely still and slowed her breathing just so...
Sometimes, she thought that she could hear a child laughing from every direction around her. The silence was enough to drive a grown man mad. So, Jasmine kept stomping around, and airing her grievances, and huffing and puffing and ranting and trying hard not to feel the creeping ache of exhaustion that weighed down her eyelids. (If the silence was this unbearable when she was awake, who knew how it might affect her dreams?)
"I mean, I knew they didn't like me, but to come knocking on my dorm room door with a letter that just says 'fuck off' in a very pretentious way... Some basic respect would be nice, but I guess they've never really given me any of that, either." Jasmine hadn't noticed it, but her walking pace had slowed to a weary trudge. "At least nobody's going to miss me much once I'm gone... Although Caoimhe will have to find something other than her one necrophile joke to make her friends laugh, and..."
"Well, I guess the classes weren't all bad. We were about to start our unit on Old World incantations, and theoretically, my accent would have helped me to excel without problem. It would have been an..." She almost yawned, but shook her head to wake herself. As soon as her eyes had almost closed, she could feel a shift in the air around her, one that didn't go away when she quickened her pace to a speedwalk.
It felt as if something was right behind her. She could sense their presence like a lurking shadow, she could hear their footsteps, she could feel their breath on the back of her neck—
Jasmine turned around. Nothing.
"Ugh. You're losing your mind..." With a frustrated sigh, she pinched the bridge of her nose, and this time decided to turn and walk in a different direction, in a small hope for something even remotely different. What was up with this place? No monsters, no elf-eaters, just... Nothing.
Maybe that was what was so terrible about this place. Once you went in, you could never get out, and you would be stuck wandering until you eventually passed out or starved or—
She turned around again. Nothing. What was wrong with her?
"Why did they send you here?"
"Because they hate me, I guess. They just don't want me around anymore." Jasmine blinked a few times, and almost kept her eyes closed, and almost wanted to. Whatever motivation she previously had towards adamancy was long gone now; she was tired, and hungry, and above all, she was just beginning to realize the importance of what she had just lost. "I mean, I didn't like it there, everyone always acted so weird around me, and people really liked pointing out that I was an orphan whenever I'd try to talk to someone, but they served coffee during breakfast, and their hot chocolate was good, too, and..."
"Do you want to go back?"
"No." Weariness getting the best of her, Jasmine cleared a space on the hard ground and sat against a tree, drawing the hood of her cloak to provide some illusion of cushion for her head against the splitting bark. Slowly, her knees pulled up to her chest. "There's nothing to go back to. It'll only get worse if I go back, I know it will. They'd probably start throwing me into the fountain instead of just my bag if I did that."
The young elf sighed deeply and hid her head in her arms, finally letting her eyes loosen and unfocus. She could feel sleep calling to her from the marrow of her very bones, and she had finally lost her will to fight it off. "It's fine. I don't care anymore. I don't mind dying here."
... The realization came much later than it should have, that she was having a conversation, and more importantly, that said conversation was happening with someone else.
Her head snapped upright with a jolt, and while all she saw was the same white moonlit mist and the thick tree-shadows, there was... Something else, just beyond her realm of perception, lurking directly in front of her. She could feel it just like she could feel the trees without touching them. That type of necromantic calling, the faint whispering trace of something long dead, that she was just barely skilled enough to have picked up on.
"Who..." She squinted, and breathed deep, and at last a dim trace of a vision appeared in her mind. It lurked just barely out of reach, a hazy figure mostly transparent in front of the mist. Tall, and large, with long bone-white fingers and a deer's skull as a mask, its eyes completely invisible behind it. When Jasmine blinked, the figure was gone.
This place was clearly doing something to mess with her head. Perhaps it was the miasma that her health professors always talked about, the night air that smelled of death, or... Maybe the mist? Some type of psychedelic gas that she couldn't previously detect? Poison? Exhaustion? Starvation? Was she dying already, and was this just what the experience was like? Jasmine swallowed hard—she didn't feel like she was dying—and tried to keep her voice from shaking from fatigue, to no avail. "Who are you?"
She could hear it draw in a slow, contemplative breath.
"I am..." Its presence grew nearer, and while Jasmine could neither see it nor hear whatever footsteps it may have made, a part of her just knew that it reached out to her, fingers outstretched, almost passively. "We are the Wilds. And now—"
Jasmine felt something icy at the center of her forehead, where the tip of his skeletal index finger had touched, and suddenly, she saw it. All of it. She wouldn't have noticed from within her own body, but her pupils dilated at that moment, and she broke into a cold sweat, every muscle about ready to give way and let her collapse but still managing to obey her command to stand.
Little shadows like fairy children surrounded them, whispers like giggles, and crows were suddenly perched in the trees, pure white-colored deer wandering flowerbeds of scarlet lycoris blossoms, and other bone-masked beings stood and watched. The one in front of her was the largest, hunched over with his chest brushing his knee underneath the tattered cloak just to get a somewhat-closer look at her. He must be taller than every tree in the forest.
Jasmine wondered if she had died, or if she had reached a higher state of living, or if she was somewhere in-between. The being's breath burned the air in a plume of steam venting from the sides of the mask.
"—so, child, are you."
Prompt by u/derDunkelElf
The Arcadian Academy for the Magically-Gifted was the very definition of the word 'elitist' in the magical community; it was a miracle that Jasmine had even been accepted, considering her less-than-appealing resumé. Orphaned, no prior schooling, self-taught in the ways of Old Magic through ancient grimoires and texts instead of in the standard New World Vernacular spells and religions; she even spoke in an accent not particularly favored by the upper society. The last trace remaining, save for her appearance, of her obvious Dökkálfar heritage.
Apparently, she had impressed the examiners enough with her magical talent alone to get into the school regardless of every other apparently-undesirable trait listed, but by the time the end of the first term had rolled around, any type of awe at her prodigious skill was quickly replaced by much less favorable feelings towards her character.
It made sense, in a cynical type of way, as to why the instructors would look the other way when a few troublemaking students would throw her bookbag into the courtyard fountain, or why no staff member seemed to care—or even disagree—when she was called a 'witch' or a 'heretic'. The Academy was focused on appearances more than it was any actual depth, and in general, it wasn't good for appearances when one of the highest-scoring students wouldn't spend her time smiling and waving, and would instead be poking around in the closed-off sections of the library that housed information on the darker forms of sorcery.
In particular, necromancy.
There was nothing truly wrong with it, if the conversation would ever be able to move past the annoyance of the 'ethics issue'. It was just as valid a magic form as any, but because it looked frightening to those of the weak-minded majority who would feel greatly uncomfortable with the idea of their own mortality as a conversation subject, it was heresy. And because she had found fascination in this 'heresy' when no other instructor or professor could pique her interest in their dozens of classes on how to make rocks float or transmute water into wine, she was now a heretic.
The punishment given to her was sneaky, it was two-faced, like a venomous snake lying in wait in a bed of dandelions. It was also just the type of punishment that illustrated perfectly the character of the school's Ljósálfari headmaster. A special assignment, just for her and nobody else, to venture into the depths of the Wilds and bring back the 'unicornis lilium' for further study which, aside from being very clearly a made-up flower, was Old Tongue for 'unicorn lily'. It read like a children's fairy-tale. Did they think that she was some type of idiot?
Jasmine was honestly more insulted by this than she was by the mention of the Wilds. Sure, entrance into the Wilds was forbidden by high elven (Ljósálfar, pure-born, or, the aristocrats and politicians of the elven caste system) law, but she wasn't the least bit frightened.
Actually, it was by this that she was honored. For them to go to the trouble of sending her to the Wilds, where she had no hope of returning alive, they must truly be frightened of her abilities, or of the liability that she posed to the very fabric of the Academy's inner politics. It was always about politics, really. "Practice heresy, and you get sent to the Wilds, where the trees themselves are said to devour mortal flesh. Remember this, students. Now go and move your rocks, leave the fun magic for the heretics to practice in their disgusting little witch covens."
Of course, Jasmine would rather not go, and she would rather not die if given the choice, but if the choice was either to die or to submit to that bastard headmaster's ridiculous prejudice, she would happily become a martyr for the cause. And who knew? Maybe the Wilds wouldn't be filled with cannibals and wendigos and the like. Maybe the pattern of the forest and the positioning of each tree didn't shift ever-so-slightly each time you closed your eyes. Maybe, maybe...
No. No maybes. Jasmine steeled herself, obstinate in the face of the winding woods and their creaking branches. She was here now, and the full moon had reached her peak in orbit above Gaia's surface. There was no more time for psyching herself up, no more hesitation.
With a sharp intake of breath, and a light tug at the strap of her single leather pack, she crossed the cobbled street, pushed herself over the wooden fence border, and crossed the threshold into what was either certain death or a new, world-changing discovery.
Somewhere, or, everywhere, something watched from the shadows, and whispers passed with the breeze that rattled the branches on bare, dead trees. Whispers that sounded like laughter.
"Now, if I were a unicorn lily, where would I be?" I can't believe I'm even humoring this. Jasmine soured at the thought that such a thing might exist, and soured even more at the thought that it didn't, and that she likely seemed like the biggest idiot on this side of the Emerald Isles for even bothering to look. The only thing frightening about this forest so far was how completely boring it was. There weren't even any birds. Just wind, and leafless trees, and cracking branches under her boots. This was a complete waste of her time.
"A unicorn lily... Really! Do they think I'm that stupid? It's obvious that they just want to get rid of me, so the least they could do is admit it!" In her frustration, she stomped down on a branch much harder than she normally would have, and the sound of dry wood snapping into splinters echoed thrice in the foggy emptiness. It was the type of emptiness, that heavy kind of silence, that made one shrink back in shyness the moment they spoke. It was so quiet that even her breathing, even her heartbeat sounded deafeningly loud, and the sound of every footstep was growing increasingly obnoxious.
After hours of walking, there had been absolutely no change in scenery. It was as if she was walking through a tunnel, with walls of trees and a cover of thick white fog to keep her from peering ahead too far. Every tree in this place seemed to be of the same species, and even though it was the peak of midsummer, they grew no leaves. They were dead, all of them—her necromantic studies have taught her to at least sense that much. They had likely been dead for a long time.
Jasmine would admit that it was odd for them to have remained dead, though. At first, she thought to herself that blocking off a place as supposedly dangerous as the Wilds with a wooden fence that even a toddler could bypass was completely idiotic, but perhaps the barrier ran deeper than the sub-par fencing. On one side, grass grew lush and emerald green, dotted with shamrocks and dandelions and everything sunny and cheerful, and on the other, everything looked to be in some manner scorched, and the trees were all dead, and the ground was littered with fallen branches and not a single leaf or blade of grass to be found. Even the dirt here felt infertile and dry, although Jasmine knew that it had rained only two nights ago.
This place was... Strange. Even though it was almost too quiet to talk, she didn't like staying silent for very long. It only took her an hour to discover that the longer she remained silent, the louder the silence became, and the harder to break, and if she stayed completely still and slowed her breathing just so...
Sometimes, she thought that she could hear a child laughing from every direction around her. The silence was enough to drive a grown man mad. So, Jasmine kept stomping around, and airing her grievances, and huffing and puffing and ranting and trying hard not to feel the creeping ache of exhaustion that weighed down her eyelids. (If the silence was this unbearable when she was awake, who knew how it might affect her dreams?)
"I mean, I knew they didn't like me, but to come knocking on my dorm room door with a letter that just says 'fuck off' in a very pretentious way... Some basic respect would be nice, but I guess they've never really given me any of that, either." Jasmine hadn't noticed it, but her walking pace had slowed to a weary trudge. "At least nobody's going to miss me much once I'm gone... Although Caoimhe will have to find something other than her one necrophile joke to make her friends laugh, and..."
"Well, I guess the classes weren't all bad. We were about to start our unit on Old World incantations, and theoretically, my accent would have helped me to excel without problem. It would have been an..." She almost yawned, but shook her head to wake herself. As soon as her eyes had almost closed, she could feel a shift in the air around her, one that didn't go away when she quickened her pace to a speedwalk.
It felt as if something was right behind her. She could sense their presence like a lurking shadow, she could hear their footsteps, she could feel their breath on the back of her neck—
Jasmine turned around. Nothing.
"Ugh. You're losing your mind..." With a frustrated sigh, she pinched the bridge of her nose, and this time decided to turn and walk in a different direction, in a small hope for something even remotely different. What was up with this place? No monsters, no elf-eaters, just... Nothing.
Maybe that was what was so terrible about this place. Once you went in, you could never get out, and you would be stuck wandering until you eventually passed out or starved or—
She turned around again. Nothing. What was wrong with her?
"Why did they send you here?"
"Because they hate me, I guess. They just don't want me around anymore." Jasmine blinked a few times, and almost kept her eyes closed, and almost wanted to. Whatever motivation she previously had towards adamancy was long gone now; she was tired, and hungry, and above all, she was just beginning to realize the importance of what she had just lost. "I mean, I didn't like it there, everyone always acted so weird around me, and people really liked pointing out that I was an orphan whenever I'd try to talk to someone, but they served coffee during breakfast, and their hot chocolate was good, too, and..."
"Do you want to go back?"
"No." Weariness getting the best of her, Jasmine cleared a space on the hard ground and sat against a tree, drawing the hood of her cloak to provide some illusion of cushion for her head against the splitting bark. Slowly, her knees pulled up to her chest. "There's nothing to go back to. It'll only get worse if I go back, I know it will. They'd probably start throwing me into the fountain instead of just my bag if I did that."
The young elf sighed deeply and hid her head in her arms, finally letting her eyes loosen and unfocus. She could feel sleep calling to her from the marrow of her very bones, and she had finally lost her will to fight it off. "It's fine. I don't care anymore. I don't mind dying here."
... The realization came much later than it should have, that she was having a conversation, and more importantly, that said conversation was happening with someone else.
Her head snapped upright with a jolt, and while all she saw was the same white moonlit mist and the thick tree-shadows, there was... Something else, just beyond her realm of perception, lurking directly in front of her. She could feel it just like she could feel the trees without touching them. That type of necromantic calling, the faint whispering trace of something long dead, that she was just barely skilled enough to have picked up on.
"Who..." She squinted, and breathed deep, and at last a dim trace of a vision appeared in her mind. It lurked just barely out of reach, a hazy figure mostly transparent in front of the mist. Tall, and large, with long bone-white fingers and a deer's skull as a mask, its eyes completely invisible behind it. When Jasmine blinked, the figure was gone.
This place was clearly doing something to mess with her head. Perhaps it was the miasma that her health professors always talked about, the night air that smelled of death, or... Maybe the mist? Some type of psychedelic gas that she couldn't previously detect? Poison? Exhaustion? Starvation? Was she dying already, and was this just what the experience was like? Jasmine swallowed hard—she didn't feel like she was dying—and tried to keep her voice from shaking from fatigue, to no avail. "Who are you?"
She could hear it draw in a slow, contemplative breath.
"I am..." Its presence grew nearer, and while Jasmine could neither see it nor hear whatever footsteps it may have made, a part of her just knew that it reached out to her, fingers outstretched, almost passively. "We are the Wilds. And now—"
Jasmine felt something icy at the center of her forehead, where the tip of his skeletal index finger had touched, and suddenly, she saw it. All of it. She wouldn't have noticed from within her own body, but her pupils dilated at that moment, and she broke into a cold sweat, every muscle about ready to give way and let her collapse but still managing to obey her command to stand.
Little shadows like fairy children surrounded them, whispers like giggles, and crows were suddenly perched in the trees, pure white-colored deer wandering flowerbeds of scarlet lycoris blossoms, and other bone-masked beings stood and watched. The one in front of her was the largest, hunched over with his chest brushing his knee underneath the tattered cloak just to get a somewhat-closer look at her. He must be taller than every tree in the forest.
Jasmine wondered if she had died, or if she had reached a higher state of living, or if she was somewhere in-between. The being's breath burned the air in a plume of steam venting from the sides of the mask.
"—so, child, are you."
