Private Tales Elbion by Sundown

[Lilette Blackbriar]

Spoiler: Music

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It pleaseth me thouest agree to my request that we meet.
I shall arrive by carriage in three weeks time,
come sundown, should my estimate prove true.
The items we didst discuss art with me, ready for thine appraisal.

With blessings of Astra,
—Lilette
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Vaezhasar Drakspae​

Eyes—silver pale—peered through the carriage window, painted in silvers of red and orange that crept between the curtains.

Sundown, just as she'd suspected! A breathless sigh relieved the tension in her shoulders even as the carriage jerked on an uneven wheel. In stark contrast to the cheap ride, They passed into the shadow of a grand building that looked more castle than school. Her brows furrowed, and she clambered slowly to the front of the carriage, thankful that the other passengers had long since departed.

She knocked on the grated front window, to which the old driver turned confusedly.

"Excuseth my intrusion Ser, Where art we headed?"

"The college...?" he pointed toward the castle-ish building ahead, "Like ye asked."

"Oh! oh, I see."

Only a few minutes passed before the carriage stopped, Lilette spilling half haphazardly from the door with her luggage in tow. It was a large backpack, though she seemed to struggle with the size more than weight of it, rattling like kitchen clutter. But still she managed, hoisting the thing over her shoulders as she waved off the driver, and turned in search of the man that drew her here.

 

[Vaezhasar Drakspae]

Lilette Blackbriar
From the cobbled courtyard's dimmer recesses, something drifted forth, not walked, not crawled, but rather propelled itself through some unnatural buoyancy that defied the pedestrian laws of locomotion.

The thing resembled nothing so much as a philosopher's delirium given corporeal form. Its bulbous cranium bore the wrinkled aspect of some prodigious cerebrum preserved in mottled purples and browns, as though Intelligence itself had sprouted a body and found the arrangement disagreeable. Where one might expect sensory organs, there existed instead a curved protrusion of horn or beak, chitinous, yellowed, and wickedly hooked.

Most unsettling were the appendages: elongated tendrils of sinewy flesh, each bristling with barbs like some angler's most pessimistic conception of what might lurk in oceanic abysses. These limbs undulated through the air mere fingerwidths above the stonework, neither touching ground nor requiring it, moving with the languid confidence of a creature to whom gravity represented merely a suggestion rather than an imperative.

The entity approached with deliberate intent, positioning itself before the newcomer. Though bereft of any visible ocular apparatus, it nonetheless conveyed the unmistakable impression of scrutiny, as though examining Lilette through senses more exotic than mere vision. The beak-structure gaped wide, revealing an interior of distressing pinkness.

What emerged was speech, after a fashion, though rendered in tones that suggested a particularly garrulous corvid had been tutored in the phonemes of human discourse without quite grasping their proper execution. The result possessed a metallic, avian quality, each syllable emerging with the piercing clarity of bronze scraped across slate.

"Guest guest guest!" it proclaimed, its enthusiasm evident despite the unnerving timbre.

"I'll take you to the master, yes yes." Two tendrils detached themselves from their aerial perambulations, extending toward her cumbersome baggage with appendages that terminated in points perhaps too sharp for comfort.

"If heavy, I carry."

The creature maintained its position, awaiting her response with what might charitably be interpreted as patience, though how one discerned patience in a being whose every visible aspect suggested it had been assembled from nightmares remained an open question.