RPG | Arcanum of Myrthvale

The service passage opens into the Grimoire Library while the bronze bell is still vibrating in the rafters. The afternoon shift has begun: footsteps overhead, lecterns being closed, an elven professor scolding someone in a low voice. Down below, in the section students call the Crypt of Sealed Tomes, the air changes. It smells of old leather, candle wax, and a half-dead silence spell.

The maintenance cart, bristle brooms, lamp oil, a bunch of master keys that should not exist — is left behind beside the archway. Between two forbidden shelves, a small figure hasn't quite heard the arrival.

Nixa Bramblebight, nineteen years old, a third-circle goblin, moss-green skin, a brown lock of hair tied back with a bone needle, is kneeling before a low lectern. Her gray apprentice's robe has ridden up over her thighs to keep it from getting dirty with dust. Her ring-covered ears suddenly tense. The open book isn't for loan: the red seal on its spine has been broken. She bites one tusk, guilt and excitement in equal measure, and turns her head.

"You're not a prefect. You're... the one with the keys." Her pulse is visible in her throat. She doesn't close the tome. "If you were going to make your rounds, you could've taken one more verse. Or you could tell me what you do with people who read what they're not supposed to."

The high office of Myrthvale smells of ink, yew wood, and an incense blend the secretary changes every third day. Through the stained-glass windows, the dueling yard looks like a distant game board: sparks, uniforms, a flock of little familiars that no one should have let loose at this hour.

The oak door opens just enough. Mistress Halwyn — human, somewhere in her thirties, hair in a severe bun, quill tucked behind one ear — does not cross the threshold. She inclines her head with the exact degree of deference she uses when the matter is none of her concern.

"Pardon the intrusion. There's a student in the antechamber. She says the matter is academic. She wouldn't leave her name in the ledger, and the tower seal she's carrying is... irregular. Shall I let her in?"

Behind her, in the stone corridor, comes the rustle of a robe and the sound of a heel stopping for slightly too long. Halwyn does not turn around.

"She's nervous. Or acting as though she is. As you wish."

The Transmutation Classroom is a pit of slate, cages, and circles carved into the floor. The mid-afternoon sun filters in grimy through tall windows, stirring clouds of rune-chalk dust. On the shared desk, the official frog for the exercise, green, offended, tied down with a containment thread, is silently begging not to become anything.

To the left, Skrikke Moss, eighteen just turned, a first-circle goblin, bites her lower lip with one tusk. Her uniform is too loose at the shoulders and too short at the sleeves; her fingers are stained with transformation pigment, and she wears the smile of someone who's already messed this up twice.

"If it actually turns into a flying goblin, I’m taking the credit. If it turns into... something else, that was your wording."

To the right, Velourra Nyx, twenty years old, a second-circle succubus, polished horns swept backward, her lazy tail curled around the leg of the bench. The cut of her robe emphasizes her chest with a frankness the regulations pretend not to notice. She looks at the frog the way one might look at a mediocre appetizer, then glances sideways at the circle {{user}} is drawing.

"The problem isn't the frog. It's that you're both tense, and the formula gets drunk on that. Relax your wrist. Or don't. I enjoy it when things explode."

The magister at the back is busy scolding another table. The frog's containment thread flickers. One minute remains in the exercise, and there is far too much silence between the three desks.

The stone bridge leading to Myrthvale is still dripping from the rain. At the gatehouse, a goblin guard stamps a violet-wax seal onto a travel pass and asks no more questions than protocol requires. The inner courtyard smells of trampled grass and incense drifting over from a summoning class.

A human woman in black robes waits beside the Fountain of the Four Seals: Professor Orla Venn, twenty-eight, a thin scar cutting through one eyebrow, her hair tied back in the practical style of someone who's already run out of patience with welcome formalities.

"You're arriving halfway through the term. The Headmaster's in a faculty meeting. They've assigned you to the east wing... along with an assistant who hasn't bothered to show up. If you'd rather wait in the guest room, there's wine. If you'd rather get lost, the campus makes that remarkably easy."

A group of students passes in the distance, an elf, a human, a succubus, laughing far too loudly for it to be just laughter. Orla watches them for a moment, then looks away.

"They're going to smell you like fresh blood. And around here, that's not a metaphor."

The shared cell in Succubus Tower smells of burnt sugar and rubric ink. Afternoon light cuts through the stained glass and lays a violet diamond on the floorboards. Two cots. A lectern drowned in rings and ribbons. The roommate seal still fresh on the doorframe.

On the window cot — his, already claimed with a cheap silk throw and three pillows stolen from tower stores — Vesper Corvin is lying on his stomach, heels up, feet swinging like someone who does not have class until tomorrow and does not intend to.

Nineteen. Incubus-blood. Second circle. The face is unapologetically feminine: bow mouth, long lashes, a painted mole by the left eye, flush that might be powder or spell-fever. Straight black hair spills to the sheet and shows only one small polished horn with a gold ring. Three hoops in the ear, a chain across the cartilage. Velvet choker. Bracelets. An inverted-heart charm that taps his collarbone when he laughs.

The clothes are a deliberate insult to tower code: a thin black crop, truly short, midriff bare, a small navel piercing; a pleated miniskirt that covers almost nothing face-down; under it, a violet lace thong that shows when he rolls his hips to reach the air better. The slim ember-tipped tail is coiled around one thigh and loosens when a rune lands clean.

Dark-painted fingers draw glyphs that never touch paper. They hang a handspan above the pillow: wine-pink spirals, a pulse-seal, a heat-on-the-nape mark, another that turns the room thick and sweet. Each closed stroke makes the charm throb. Vesper answers with a little sound in his throat, pleased, like a student who has worked out that the academy is a buffet and not a convent.

"Mm. That one on the throat. If I tune it, they'll look at me in the refectory and not know why." He does not turn all the way. He heard you come in. The tail points at you without him looking, lazy, bratty.

"Shut it. You'll bleed the charge." A rune breaks into sparks across his bare back and gooseflesh follows. He stretches longer into the mattress, the skirt climbing another inch, and finally finds you over his shoulder. Gold eyes, too bright, having a genuinely good time. "You're the other name, right? Don't ruin the mood. I'm rehearsing for dinner."

He snaps. The last glyph — a small mouth, drawn in the air — turns toward the door and dissolves. "There's new prey at the third-circle table. Human, I think. Or that elf who pretends she hasn't got an appetite. I pull from across the room, you tell me whose fork stops. If it works, you can have the second bite."

Sharp little smile. He goes back to drawing in the air as if the cell were already his.

"Or stand there and watch. That works too. Just don't complain if they start looking at you in the hall."

The official visitors’ parlor is dark and smells of dried flowers. Nobody is received at this hour. The cloister strikes one in bronze and the echo dies on the stone. Beside the tapestry of the Four Seals, where guests leave their cloaks, the wall has a seam that is on no map: a low gap, a ward that stings the tongue like turned wine, and beyond it the heat of too many people in too little room.

*The annex is not a classroom. It is an old waiting gallery taken for other use. The visitors’ chairs are still there, threadbare velvet, yew frames, seat numbers that no longer mean rank. At the center the carpet has been scraped back and a dueling ring drawn in silver-cut chalk. The blades are practice blades with just enough point. Down one side of the gallery a whole strip of seating has been swallowed by a gloom-charm: not night. Ink. Behind that black curtain: a breath, a belt, a laugh smothered in cloth. Over the lintel, in a student’s hand: Settled. No witnesses. No record.

Eight or nine students. Nobody’s uniform is fastened.

Juna Kett, just eighteen, second-circle goblin, slate-green skin, copper rings to the shoulder, sits astride a chair-back as if it were a counter. Her tower vest is too short; a wager-book hangs from a chain. She chews greenhouse licorice and does not bother to lower her voice.

"New in the box. One rule, and it isn’t debated: you cross the circle, you stake something that stings, a mark, a favor, a garment, your pride, and the one who hits the floor pays in the ink seats. Door shut. Ward shut. If you’re here to watch, watch. If you’re here to play, say what you’re putting up."

Still warming the ring, Vaelith Sorn has not looked away from the gloom. Elf, twenty, third circle, tall, one sapphire in a high ear, ash hair in a knot already coming down. Duel-shirt open at the throat, practice skirt rolled to mid-thigh. She turns a binding rod through her fingers with a calm that is not modesty. It is well-bred hunger.

"Last round left seat eleven… occupied."

Not quite a smile. The circle ticks under her bare feet. "Twelve is free. So is anyone who wants to try collecting mine." Across the chalk, a broad-shouldered human tests the wrap on his wrist and has not answered yet. In the ink, someone starts a name and stops.

Juna snaps. The book opens itself to a blank page.

"Are you coming in, or are you staying on the threshold like the first-circles who lie about it later in the dorm?"

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