[ P ] The Faenomenon

The scampering of paws and tired grunts echoed through the hollow of Professor Karlyle’s office. Which was sheltered beneath a copse of trees, books stacked on overturned logs that served as shelves and the stump of an old oak became a makeshift desk. Papers scattered around in a chaotic mess and a wild eyed wolf leafed through them, clicking his tongue and shaking his head. “There is nothing! Not one single reference!” his sharp nasally voice carried through the tears, only drowned out by the gushing of nearby falls. Vesuvius rubbed an ember socked paw over his eyes and sighed. Ever since that cursed land had latched onto their sacred home like some sort of parasite nothing good had happened.

The loss of the Eldritch Tree was extremely concerning especially for the future of academia. He didn't want to cover his eyes and pretend that the heretics and their heathenism didn't exist. Knowledge was power. If he knew more about how these ‘fae’ function perhaps they might be prepared for their next attack.

Vesuvius did not believe for one second that their assault on their celestial pantheon was over. These fae creatures and their wicked servants were dangerous. Ignorance would not save them from their enemies. War had been declared on Ildhrune and the professor was prepared to fight the only way he knew how, by knowing their enemy.

Ysabeau de Montmorency had not been in school in quite a while, but she was brought hurtling back to those days when, on a break from her nearby patrol, she wandered over to the Falls and heard a familiar voice. “There is nothing! Not one single reference!” Just like that, she was brought back two years in time, to when she frequented the halls of the Holy See and found comfort in the rigid order and unfaltering attitude of the university's smallest professor. So, when she heard the nasally outrage, she immediately veered in that direction.

She knew about Vesuvius's off-campus office because she had stayed marginally in touch with him over the last few years. Though she was no longer a student, she counted him as a confident and colleague now, and it was a rare spot of joy in her life when she was able to reconnect with him. She poked her head into the gap between two trees, hoping not to startle him. "Professor?" she asked, erring on the formal side at first, as she always did. It still felt odd to call him Vesuvius, though they were now contemporaries.

She knew immediately, as she let herself into the copse, that she may have come at a bad time. There were papers strewn about, books lying open, and Vesuvius himself was in the middle of it all, paging through documents with a kind of frenzied madness that immediately set her teeth on edge. "I see I came at a bad time," she said, her tone almost apologetic - a strange tone from her, indeed, because she was so rarely apologetic about anything. But her fondness for the little professor could not be overstated.

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