Application: Cyd "Codex" Sherman, "The Guild"

[codex_of_good]

She had not left her house in a week.

This was not entirely unusual--mild agoraphobia was just one of the reasons she had gone to a therapist for years. Until the break-up. How many people had their therapists break up with them? It wasn't good for self esteem. And while Codex had been doing so much better lately (she had hosted a party

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[arrogantmage]

Lezard Valeth did not swish into the Sorting Room. His cloak did some swishing, admittedly. Utterly ignorant of music videos, he'd never grasped that a magically fluttering cloak stirred by no palpable wind was no longer what might be called an impressive visual effect.

One of these days he was going to coax mystical fog to rise from the very stones of Hogwarts' floors, and some sassy Muggle would finally tell him about fog machines. (Still, you couldn't rent teleportation from a party store. They couldn't take that away from him! Only ... most wizards of legal age could Apparate ...)

In any event, he did not swish, though his cloak swished. No, he strode in manful fashion, bedecked in his usual LARPtastic ensemble. Stray locks of hair flopped over the rims of his glasses. He could really use a haircut.

"Well met, fair maid," he said in his Smoove B cultivated voice. The one he somehow taught himself between the first and second Valkyrie Profile games. It took a speedy reader to get through the millions of pages of what Midgard called symbolically the Philosopher's Stone, and the average Hogwarts application took Lezard much less time than it should have taken. He was able within seconds to pick out the good bits.

"Level eighty, you say? This would have required much dreary trudging through dungeons, I am sure. I applaud your patience." Lezard knew only all too well how dreary it could be. He'd had to feign ordinary mortal frailty while traveling with the Princess Alicia. And the rest of her party had needed to do a lot of leveling up.

[codex_of_good]

"Oh god."

There was a guy talking to her. A reasonably attractive strange guy. Who just called her "fair maid."

This was not at all normal.

But talk of levels and dungeons were right up her alley, and she smiled stiffly and awkwardly back at him. "Yeah, the grind sucked. But I had some good people to play with--mostly--and once we actually got ourselves organized and back on schedule, the instances and raids weren't so bad. There was lots of new gear in this expansion, too. I'm working on getting an epic priest staff! I'm still wearing a blue, even if it's one of the new drops, and I want to replace it with a purple so bad."

[arrogantmage]

The color-coding of healers' accoutrements mattered little to an alchemist-turned-necromancer; the blue and purple business Lezard did not care to inquire about. Mages of Midgard had, when last he visited, all used staves equipped with a Blue Bludgeon Rune, but that had not been the case during the period of time in which Lezard came of age (which had actually been some centuries later). What interested Lezard here was the girl's appreciation for epic weaponry.

"For the right staff, any amount of tedium is not too much." With an odd admixture of shyness and pride, he offered: "I have the Wand of Apocalypse, if you should care to see it. That, and the Holy Wand of Telos." And Monster Manifesto, though he alone could equip that wand-turned-book.

[codex_of_good]

Codex's eyes widened. The Wand of the Apocalypse sounded more like a warlock's weapon, but the Holy Wand of Telos sounded like it would be fitting for a priest. Come on, it was right there in the name! Holy.

"The second one," she stammered, expecting to see a laptop or iPhone app linking the weapon from the online armory. "Which MMO are you playing, because that one doesn't sound like the ones that I looked up a couple of weeks ago. Ooh, or are you on a test server and got one from the new patch?"

[arrogantmage]

Lezard sighed. His back stiffened. "I see. You are one of those who believes magic is not real, I suppose." But the terms she'd used, the way she spoke, these were so like the learning he had received in Flenceburg! Unreasonably he felt as though she'd tricked him somehow. "I assure you it is no game. Where do you think you are?"

[codex_of_good]

"Believes magic is... what? I'm having a psychotic break. Obviously. Finally. It was only a matter of time, I guess, with the pressure and my therapist blocking my number, and... I mean, I was just in my apartment, so I can't be here, so obviously I'm crazy. Right?"

[arrogantmage]

Lezard was beginning to understand why Professor Snape reacted with such bitterness to certain tendencies in Sortees. However, Lezard being Lezard, he also saw possibilities in those tendencies where Snape would see only insult.

"That could be," he mused in a voice either silky or cheesy (audience mileage may very) in its smoothness. (Nacho-cheesy, perhaps. Think that Velveeta consistency.) "If you are indeed insane, what will you do next? There are no consequences to the actions of an insane person."

[codex_of_good]

Codex had plenty of experience with cheesy guy voices. They were pretty much a given via Vent when guys realized that there was an actual girl behind the in-game avatar. However, she was not at all used to them in person.

"I--um--I don't know? And I think there are kind of consequences. I could end up in a mental hospital or something. Or I could become a hobo. Homeless person. I don't know what you're supposed to call them, but they smell funny and they're always saying weird things."

[arrogantmage]

"Whether you speak madness is entirely your choice, but you will not need to, hm, smell other than you wish to smell." Lezard demonstrated with a wandless version of Scourgify. All over Codex. With mun permission, but not with IC consent or warning.

[codex_of_good]

Weird. Weird. It was like walking through a car wash, except without the water and hot wax and noise.

"What the hell was that?" she demanded. Freaked out Codex had two settings, mousy/terrified and Holy Smackdown of the Geek Kind. She had already done the one, and was now well into the other without noticing. Except without the anger, and yelling.

[arrogantmage]

"Magic," replied a smug mage. "Or perhaps your imagination, if you prefer to think so?"

[codex_of_good]

"No, I don't think--my imagination isn't that active." Said the person who, a week earlier, had found herself face to face with her in-game avatar, who had offered her advice and told her to stop being such a n00b. "Okay, so. Magic. Now what?"

[arrogantmage]

Oh, good, she hadn't gone off half-cocked with silliness about consensual enchantments and all that other ethical hogwash that Lezard's instructors had routinely harped upon. Lezard did so hate it when people got fussy about his casting magic upon them without warning. What was the good of magic if you warned everyone before you hexed or otherwise altered them?

Besides, a little cleaning spell had never hurt anyone. Primavera used to say it was tingly, like a good visit to a spa, whatever a spa was. Never mind that Primavera's epidermis was stronger than human-standard

"Now," said Lezard, "whatever you wish is what happens, because you will have the power to make it so, or if you do not, you will know people who do."

[codex_of_good]

Had Codex known there was in fact a taboo against enchanting others without their permission, she might have raised a bit more of a fuss. As it was, the spell was harmless enough, and did leave her smelling oddly minty-fresh. She really couldn't argue with that. "I, um... what?" Also, if I can do that too, can you tell me how, because I bet that would really save on laundry money."