[Charms] T1: Lesson 2: Shields and Bindings

[Helia Ollivander]

She nodded along thoughtfully at the beginning of the lesson, finding the speech on matrixes and auras quite fascinating, but when Erich told Novella to attack Thom, and she did it, she knew something was wrong. 'Is he testing them? Is this some kind of cruel game to him or what?' she thought, an anger suddenly rising towards their self appointed 'professor'. Her friends were attacking each other for no reason more than he willed them to. 'At least he's kind of helping Thom. Giving him instructions to save himself, but still.' She wanted to leap from her desk, help in some way... but she knew she couldn't. It was over nearly as quickly as it had begun. Thom had done it. He had created a forcefield around himself, bent the magical aura surronding him to his will. But how? Why?

Then her thoughts began drifting back to the question she had heard in her mind during the brawl How can he with what's already inside him. Is this what you wanted to know, my dear?
'Not exactly...' she thought to herself, unsure if he could hear her thoughts or not. She didn't particularly care though. 'I, infact, tend to be more curious as to whether it's his heart you care anything about... or what's hidden in his mind.' If he indeed could hear her thoughts she knew he'd understand. She doubted if she said out loud anyone else would anyways, but she didn't need to get them wondering. Might be risky with the evidence she'd been uncovering as of late.

[Erich Aubry]

Rainer crosses his legs and returns his glass to the table. "What makes you do these things?" he asks though Erich is already in his head and was there for that question before Rainer thought to say so aloud. After a unsually long pause, Erich answers him.

"Because they'll write stories about us someday. We'll be immortalized in history." Here he tries to reach across the table but Rainer snatches his hand away like Erich knew he would. "There has never been anyone like us and there never will be again," he finishes more quietly.

"All you psychics are so smug." The glass cracks where it stands on the table. "You're just terrified of being forgotten, you don't know the first thing about the people you're supposed to be helping. You are blind and pathetic." Rainer crosses his arms and stares across at Erich. "That wasn't an answer."

***

He watches as Novella is raised and, pushed away with greater strength, repelled by the force of Thom's shield. She would soon be unable to cross the boundry of his person as long as his field remain charged. Already Erich begins to close the lacerations on Thom's hand and the back of his head; soon it would be as if nothing had happened at all. And yes, he began with out turning, I can hear you. Erich's voice is as cool and translucent as the lake just in view of the classroom. I have always cared about Rainer--- since before that was even his name. I was there even when he was still Tom and still Harry. I was the look of fear in their eyes the day the lights went out. Only then he's turned and his gazes settles serenely on Helia's proud face and asks with sudden recognition. "But why would you know to ask?"

***

"Hope always has something to do with terror," he explains finally and Rainer understands immediately.

[Thom Moen]

Novella was pushed away from Thom now, his will forcing her chin upwards so that her own throat was bared. He kicked his legs, knocking her off balance, and as she fell he took hold of her throat, his hands no longer trembling from the agony and blood that she had produced from him. Her fingers were thick with blood and dregs of his skin, and once again he felt like heavying, wondering if she would be animal enough to lick them clean. "YOU'RE - NOT - HUMAN!" he screamed hoarsely, his chest pumped so full of adrenaline he was unable to do anything but roar. He felt like the beast now.

He dragged Novella onto her back and pressed down on her throat with his hand, and he could see the veins in his arms like ropes, thick and pulsing and red. The small cresent moon scar throbbed painfully, as if it knew and remembered.

The classroom was a sick dream. The teacher asleep as the stranger watches blood and screaming with facination, the observing student wishing she could take notes yet too eager to take her eyes off a practical. Thom pushed himself away from Novella, his back hitting a cabinet hard so that three thick glass vials fell around his head, shattering in chunks.

He moaned in suprise, trapped against the cabinet by a jagged, angry a glass prison.

[Helia Ollivander]

She tried to push all the newspaper articles and yearbook excerpts out of her thoughts before he could find out just how much interest she really had in the subject. She tried to focus only on her answer, "Just a few too many coincidences. That's all," she said finally. She looked back at the struggle between Thom and Novella. she heard Thom screaming that Novella wasn't human, watched as Thom himself turned on Novella in rage, and as he flew back against the wall to be stuck behind shattered glass.
"Thom, stop letting your anger get the best of you. Whether you want to believe it or not, it's not Novella's fault that she's attacking you," she may have betrayed herself a bit there, but she would just have to wait to find out. "Just use your shield, you'll be the one worse for wear in the end if you don't," she wasn't shouting, nor was she being condesending. Or at least she tried not to be. She was worried about her friends, but she knew that if all their emotions took control here, the classroom would become a battlefield. Was that what he wanted? Was this man Erich trying to turn them all against each other? And if so, why? Why pit Thom and Novella against each other specifically, and what was her part in this mad house production...

[Thom Moen]

Thom clenched his jaw, narrowing his eyes darkly at Helia. "Not her fault? You make her sound like a rabid animal." he said in a low voice. "She's human. She's in control even if he's trying to make her do something." Thom stared heavily at Erich. He was no longer under the impression that the man was supposed to be here, or that he was even the same as everyone else in the room. He was completley wrong somehow.

"I hope you proved your point." he said to the man.

[Novella Sandler]

Erich's control lapses the moment Thom's hands wrap around her throat. She does not know where she is or what is happening, she knows only that she is dying and she does not fight back, even though she can finally hear her familiars screaming in the back of her mind.

She is almost disapointed when she can breath again.

Darin and Loiosh crowd around her, and Loiosh stares at Thom now, with wings raises to make himself appear bigger, hissing rythmicly. Darin is in Novella's head again, forcing her to breath despite the pain of her lungs expanding little by little. She cannot hear the voices of the people around her except distantly through Loiosh's ears, and she cannot see at all.

[Erich Aubry]

"But is it not a terrible condescension to say that one cannot help themselves? You would all surely judge me for my actions without knowing why or for what I've done anything. But how can you trust anyone who can't care for themselves?" Erich turns pointedly toward Novella and Thom and continues, "How can you ever be safe with one another? You've already suspended your compassion and rejected her." Erich dissolves and reforms beside Thom and lays the cool palms of his hands on the boy's shoulders as Novella had moments earlier. He leans in to whisper. "I thought she was supposed to be the animal."

You accuse me of alterior motives, of being cold, Erich glances toward Helia briefly before returning his attention to Novella, who rises to her knees. His voice continues in Helia's ear, it vibrates against the base of her spine and moves as a chill. But what did you think you would find if you came looking for Rainer, for the history that has brought him here? The unoccupied chairs in the room rise from the floor, book shelves lurch from where they rest against the walls. Does your curiosity have anything to do with compassion, Ms. Ollivander? The furniture hurtles toward Thom, shattering and snapping against the involuntary walls that have enveloped him. "This barrier is the evidence of your fear, of your distrust. Are you glad to be so safe?" The bear cubs huddle in the corner closest to Rainer at the head of the room. They have nothing to say about this. Erich thinks at each of the students. If you cared about eachother, what would it mean? Crash by crash.

[Helia Ollivander]

She was tired of these mind games. She was tired of her friends attacking each other so that he could make some twisted point that had nothing to do with them. She was tired of Erich. She responded to him out loud. Her friends deserved to hear what was being said, "Compassion?" she said slowly. "Who are you to talk about compassion after turning friend against friend?" her voice was soft, but pained. She had just had to watch two of her best friends tear each other to bits, and now he was asking her about compassion?! "What does fear have to do with anything when it's forced upon a person. Weren't you afraid, looking into Rainer's eyes as his hand gripped your throat? As he broke your jaw? As he murdered you?" Perhaps she was going a bit overboard, but she was mad now. "And you say you can still care for him, more than we can care about each other? Perhaps that's true now, after you've manipulated us. After you've toyed with our minds, and emotions, and even our sense of right and worng, to the point where Thom..." she stared over at him, lying exausted and scared from Novella's attack "...is a breath away from death. Where Novella can't even keep herself from attacking her own friend, her own comrad that helped save her from lethifolds; and where I..." and then it dawned on her, "And I'm too busy worrying about a couple of dumb old wizards to try and protect my friends." She hung her head, tears stinging the back of her eyes. "I'm sorry..." she said in a small voice to Thom and Novella. She already knew it wouldn't do any good, but she had to say it anyways. "I'm so, so sorry."

[Thom Moen]

Thom drew his knees up a little, burying his face in his hands as the furniture thundered against his barrier. With every strike it throbbed an angrier red, the colour deepening as if becoming more solid like a real wall, strengthening with his own doing and ego. Thom could not answer Erich. He did not know if he felt safe or not. But then again, the question had had nothing to do with protection, had it? It was in Thom's nature to look after himself. He did not need anyone else - or the connect that Erich spoke of. Thom the animal? Taking care of himself alone did not make him an animal - he would not let Erich convince him of that.

He looked through his fingers at Novella. Compassion? He listened to Helia speak it out loud. He could not understand what she had been thinking - or what had been in her head a moment ago - to be so outraged at Erich. Her eyes caught the light and they were inpenetrable with the shimmer of tears. They seemed to burn with the torch light reflected in them.

If you cared about eachother, what would it mean?

Thom looked at Erich. 'I don't know.'

His gaze moved slowly to Rainer, a humourless, emotionless smile forming weakly on his face. 'But nor do you.'

[Erich Aubry]

Erich approaches Helia slowly and, his body beginning to destabilize and return to its lesser elements, lowers himself to meet her crying. "Better that you should all learn this now," he says, his fingers turn to water on her brow when he reaches for her. "We should have known as much ourselves." Rainer mutters something against the desk and it becomes clear he is close to waking. Erich heaves his apparition to the front of the room, standing between them and their professor. "All of what you have said today is true, Thom. I did not know anything about what it meant to care for others and though I believed otherwise, when tested, it was the death of me." Checking to see that Rainer is still asleep, he continues under his breath, "I could not help anyone." Around them the room begins to reassemble. Chairs appear and reappear in tight rows as they had stood when the students had first entered. The bookshelves and cupboards have perfect posture and lean against the walls. There is no blood, no debris and less and less of a ghost. "When your time comes do not make it so easy for them. Take care- class dismissed." Then the room is empty of him and each of the students find themselves seated just as they were before Erich first spoke.

And one last correction, Ms. Ollivander. Despite all accounts to the contrary, it was not Rainer who killed me. You are not the first to become taken with, as you put it, dumb old wizards.

[Prof. Rainer Freundschaft]

Rainer stares at the students unsure of whether to wake them. They stare back at him as if in a trance and although he understands they need their rest, having just woken from his own untimely nap with the pattern of his desk impressed on his face, this is just ridiculous. He has brought in model for the class and would hate to have them miss it.

Rainer snaps his fingers at them ineffectually hoping they will wake.

[Novella Sandler]

Loiosh and Darin wake first, with the sensitive ears of beasts, and are, for a moment, disoriented. They are no longer used to waking in their own bodies. They have taken, lately, to sleeping with conciousnesses linked, in Novella's head, working together to quell her nightmares.

But Novella is still asleep, until Loiosh calls out to her mind, and then she is awake, and smiles at her head of house before she remembers, and then she can only cry.

[Helia Ollivander]

She shudders into wakening, quickly drying tears that are not there, but still in the dream. She looks over at a crying Novella and a still sleeping Thom. 'Man I'm out of it... What did the hosue elves put in my food last night...' she knew it hadn't been a dream... at least not exactly. There was something more to it, but she was going to force herself into denial as long as possible. It made things simpler. Except of course for Novella. If she would only be quiet it would be a lot easier to pretend that nothing had happened, that it had all been a harrible horrible nightmare brought on by the left over adrenaline from the battle yesterday, but no. She had to be hysterical about it, 'Maybe I just missed something in class that scared her? Yeah, that has to be it. The professor performed some charm and it scared her but I was too exhausted to pay any attention to it. That's sensible... sort of.' She held her head. It felt like a million fwoopers were inside her head shreiking and none of her silencing spells were doing any good. She groaned and let her head fall against the desk with a satisfying 'THUD', 'Can we just get this lesson over with...' she thought, wanting very much to go to the nurse and find out if there were any way to remove her brain from her body without dying.

[Thom Moen]

Thom raised his head, his eyes heavy and his neck throbbing from having lolled on his chest at a funny ankle. He was still by the cupboard. He frowned. The shattered furniture was no longer scattered around him - the splinters were not sticking from the floor, and none covered Novella like they had a moment ago. The red shield had vanished too. 'Helia, Novella...?' he whispered so that only they could hear. He could see Novella crying already, and Rainer was awake. Thom's cheeks flushed pink as he scrambled up and into the closest chair. His head spun with the sudden effort.

Gingerly he stroked the back of his head with the tips of his fingers. There was no blood, no crack from where he'd been forced the smash it against the floor. He felt a twinge of anger, but it faded quickly. Perhaps it would be easier to forget if he did not have anything to show for it. For a while he had been using the scar on the inside of his arm as an excuse for his behaviour. He could only go so low.

He pulled his sleeved down over his fists in tight balls, and crossed them high on his chest under his arms, as if cold. 'Sorry, professor,' he said without knowing why.