Aesclepius - Oh Yes, I Do Magic, Don't I? I Should Do Something With That.
The whirr of the air conditioning unit was a soft humm in the back of his sensory range, and the Magus who had taken the name of Aesclepius turned the page in relative silence. It had been a quiet...year? Something to that effect... He had recently had a call from his cousin (...that boy, he shook his head, I should check up on him) that had left him feeling irritated and more than that, tinged with disappointment.
A turn of the page. Some days after that, he had spent tim with perhaps the only person he allowed to be close to him, the only one who was allowed within his private world. It had been some time and he had missed her deeply, had not realized just how much until she was there at his door. When his lips met hers, his arms moved around her he felt something within him move. Color flooded back into his world, a memory of the thngs outside his work and reading. He turned the page again.
He had been put off by the things he had seen amongst the other Mages, or rather intimidated by the sense of comraderie. Trying to be amongs them, he had gone too far in New York, remembered the savage glee as he pulled at the blood and called out to the primal forces. He was not present, but through the power of Space he could see, he could almost *feel* the Tremere Lich's blood become acid in his body, pain obliterating the monster's world long enough for other Awakened of the city to invade his mind in the endless seconds before his death. Aesclepius had been so angry at the death, at the use of murder for an easier method of mystical transportation and the horrors wrought, but what he had done that day went against his personal code. Too far.
So he had pulled back. He had gone back to being Doctor George Mason, a convenient name to call himself without the connections that might do him harm. He scaled back his research some, feeling somehow unworthy to continue in his undeavor and focused more on the day to day mundanity of study and the day job, the forensic pathology. And that was how it had been, until she had brought the color back into his life. Perhaps it was time to change that, he reflected. The page turned, and he paused when he realized he could not remember just what he was reading, had not been with the book for a while.
A change would be needed, he thought. To do more than just return to the Wise, but to change setting, a new place for himself. And...what better place, then where he had sinned out of anger? Where years ago, his own fallen mentor had said he once studied.
It would be a new start. There was magic in that.
A turn of the page. Some days after that, he had spent tim with perhaps the only person he allowed to be close to him, the only one who was allowed within his private world. It had been some time and he had missed her deeply, had not realized just how much until she was there at his door. When his lips met hers, his arms moved around her he felt something within him move. Color flooded back into his world, a memory of the thngs outside his work and reading. He turned the page again.
He had been put off by the things he had seen amongst the other Mages, or rather intimidated by the sense of comraderie. Trying to be amongs them, he had gone too far in New York, remembered the savage glee as he pulled at the blood and called out to the primal forces. He was not present, but through the power of Space he could see, he could almost *feel* the Tremere Lich's blood become acid in his body, pain obliterating the monster's world long enough for other Awakened of the city to invade his mind in the endless seconds before his death. Aesclepius had been so angry at the death, at the use of murder for an easier method of mystical transportation and the horrors wrought, but what he had done that day went against his personal code. Too far.
So he had pulled back. He had gone back to being Doctor George Mason, a convenient name to call himself without the connections that might do him harm. He scaled back his research some, feeling somehow unworthy to continue in his undeavor and focused more on the day to day mundanity of study and the day job, the forensic pathology. And that was how it had been, until she had brought the color back into his life. Perhaps it was time to change that, he reflected. The page turned, and he paused when he realized he could not remember just what he was reading, had not been with the book for a while.
A change would be needed, he thought. To do more than just return to the Wise, but to change setting, a new place for himself. And...what better place, then where he had sinned out of anger? Where years ago, his own fallen mentor had said he once studied.
It would be a new start. There was magic in that.