Round III Of Excerpts From The One True School Master Of Vault 41

Round III of Excerpts from The One True School Master of Vault 41

Agatha turned to the Rafal. "Interesting,” she nodded. "I'm sure you don't remember the names of all the masses you've murdered, but tell me, whose face do you see in your nightmares?" she prompted expectantly.

“Rh—h-hACK,” said he, the Evil sorcerer.

“What? Come again?” Agatha prodded all too knowingly as she got to her feet.

Rafal seized up and started to convulse silently. Something was obstructing his airways.

Sophie hopped up from her seat. “Aggie! He’s choking, Aggie!” she squawked.

“Oh! Well, do something then! He’s yours to look after!” Agatha crossed her arms and stared Rafal dead in the eye as he suffocated, daring him to try anything.

“B-but, I don’t know how to—" Sophie’s voice died in her throat as she fluttered her hands in distress. She looked at Agatha in askance. "Would you revive or resuscitate..."

Agatha shook her head stubbornly. She was Sophie's savior and no one else's. On occasion, she would save Tedros, but he usually wouldn't let her save him. "If he dies now, there'll be no one to blame and it'll be of natural causes. And, I'll be doing Tedros a favor by sparing him a heart attack. He's been through so much already, I'm not sure his heart could take another shock, like the one in front of us."

Sophie exhaled, ready to blow up, flustered and red. She could barely get words out, and froze in place. Her ribcage throbbed with panic, like she’d swallowed her heart whole.

She turned to Kiko, next, to seek help, but found that Kiko was gone! Sophie hadn’t noticed that the Evergirl, the only one she could expect a scrap of human decency from had fled from the table!

Turning bluer by the second, Rafal stopped clutching his throat.

He stood up abruptly, chair scraping the glass floor as it skidded back with a screech. He motioned with his hands to signal to the girls that they didn’t have to intervene, dismissing them.

Gripping the table, he leaned on it, bent over its edge, and thrust his fists against his diaphragm hard, dislodging what had caught in his throat.

A saliva-coated coin of cucumber shot out of his windpipe and hit Agatha squarely in the eye.

Sophie sagged in relief.

The slice of cucumber slid down Agatha’s cheek leaving a trail of spittle. “Well, that’s settled,” she griped sullenly. She flumped down on her seat cushion again, long, rangy limbs askew. “Too bad you’re alive.”

“Too bad indeed. For you,” Rafal smirked, stretching his tensed jaw so it clicked.

Agatha winced. “After yet another run-in with death, you’re still here. Guess my luck’s run dry for good. Will Lady Fortune ever be on my side?”

“Not if you don’t cease with the complaining,” he taunted, “If only I could stretch you beneath her wheel, but alas… I’m beholden to your dear friend.”

“Enough,” Sophie boomed as she slammed her hands on the glass table. The table shuddered, and the filigree bone china jittered as several serving dishes clinked together.

Agatha and Rafal swiveled to look at her.

“That’s it,” Sophie fumed, “I’ll put up with none of this infantile bickering while I’m present. You two must learn to cooperate. I know you don’t trust him, Agatha, darling, and admittedly, I don’t either, but I think he’s trying, at the very least, to be helpful, so be civil. The same goes for you as well, Rafal. At least try to look contrite. And remember: my say is final.”

All three fell silent for a moment.

"If you actually were wondering,” Rafal told Agatha, "The answer is Rhian. His face has haunted my dreams every night since he died.”

⸻

[Note: A lot comes to pass between these two scenes, so don’t expect them to be perfectly chronological. I just thought the shift could be fun to see.

And, this second section takes place earlier on in the plot by the way. We're nowhere near the climax with these two excerpts.

Also, watch what you think, Agatha. Some dreadful irony will come back to bite you, and everyone to be fair.

Oh, and did anyone catch the Shakespeare reference?]

Good's glass walls beamed back the moonlight like searchlights spilling from the columns. The walls were truly a spectacular sight, the mazes of halls all illuminated in silver.

Yet beauty and brilliant lighting do not the optimum conditions for breaking and entering make.

Every polished facet contained Agatha’s reflection, exposing her in her black robes. And, she was well-aware of this disadvantage, but she would never be able to slip away during the day, so night it was.

She rounded the bend and her spine prickled with the familiar sensation of being watched.

After her run-in with Professor Anemone, she now roamed the halls with much less fear. This time, she encountered a different petrified faculty member. Pollux.

She reached up and knocked lightly at the space between his eyes. Nearly soundlessly, it echoed, muffled by his thick-skulled, furred brow.

Just what she’d thought, he had nothing but a load of fluff in there. Agatha laughed to herself.

The labyrinthine glass breezeways, went winding and overlapping every which way, breathtaking in their complexity, but Agatha had discovered that no matter which corridor she turned into, the swathes of friezes lining the walls would direct her, pointing her in the same direction, hopefully the right direction.

The pearlescent friezes were inlaid with nacre, and they cast ribboned, iridescent rainbows when it was day. Though now, they gleamed a dim silver.

There they were, the figures frozen in motion, a goose girl’s tresses, a farm lad’s cap blown in the wind, trees doubled over, all bowing to the same current.

Certainly, they had been revised, but by whom?

All in one, singular direction they went, one after another in a sundry procession: fairy godmothers’ crystalline wands, soldiers’ spears, kings’ scepters, shamans’ pipes and tapering beards, Seers’ gazes, wizards’ staffs, fair maidens’ dismembered, white fingers, birds’ beaks, mermens’ tridents, agrarians’ pitchforks, crowds’ pennants, jousters’ lances, heraldic banners fluttering aloft, sylphs’ wispy tails, cupids’ arrows, and quixotic princes’ swords.

Agatha could not make heads or tails of these strange alterations to the scenes acting as her guides. They were most probably leading her to her final destination, as if they were conspiring to help her. But her theft would be a far cry from a Good Deed. It breached the Rules.

It was as if the School itself were supporting her theft from it. Or, could it be?

She stopped short.

And a prideful voice projected from somewhere sounded, reverberating through the glass-enclosed tunnel. “Move,” it told her with marked disdain and thinly veiled impatience.

It was coming from the walls, she concluded. Agatha looked about uneasily, thoroughly unsettled, and spun on her heels to face them. The carvings.

She stared intently at the wall closest to her.

A lean, cloaked prince was posed in the midst of slaying a serpentine creature that curled in on itself, swallowing its own tail. It was circular, made of a writhing mass of things.

Agatha shuddered involuntarily as she studied it. The beast’s scales resembled Japeth’s Scims a great deal. All snakes reminded her of Japeth these days. A wyrm, was it? No, it was an ouroboros.

And the prince’s banner, it was a gloomier, storm-cloud grey, silver like the Wish Fish. And it had a swan gracing it, an odd, obsidian piece of glass set into the frieze, looking darker than the rest of the banners. Still, it held gleams of iridescence. It was just duller and darker in finish than the other coats of arms. Almost, just almost, Evil’s banner.

The prince turned to her from his carved position, pointed his sword ahead and glared right at her. His swan crest blinked and seemed to glare down at her as well.

“Move, you imbecile,” said a cold, villainous, not particularly princely voice from the carved figure. “We don't have all night.”

Agatha stared dumbfounded.

"Yes, it's me,” Rafal’s voice seethed. “And I can't hold them frozen forever. So, go.”

Agatha stepped away from the wall, and proceeded down the last few lengths of the hall.

No, impossible. Rafal helping her was impossible, she thought breathlessly. Laughable. She was tempted to scoff, but held herself back since she didn’t want to take this one-time occurrence for granted.

Rafal. Of course. Always had to represent his own side, she supposed. The depraved madcap. Couldn’t masquerade as Good for a day, could he? If he had to be Good, he’d croak. She was sure of it. There wasn’t a single thing in these green Woods he could do to repent, help or no help. Not a thing.

He always had to be so maddeningly obvious about his darker, murderous instincts. His cold voice had been a dead giveaway. Even Sophie was subtler. And Sophie, subtle? No chance of it! He was just worse by comparison, that was all.

All the doom and gloom and the no-nonsense demeanor, it got tiring after a while. Christ, had she been like that before?

Agatha had masqueraded as a witch her whole life and look where it had gotten her. Just once, she wished she could see him beaten down and forced to act a harder role. Imagine, him, dealt a harder role to play. Like hers.

Had he ever been oppressed in his life? He was an oppressor! Well, Evil had been oppressed, but that was his own doing. He’d brought the curse upon himself by slaughtering his own brother!

You could do anything while Evil. But Good came with restrictions. The Nevers were freer, truly. They didn’t chastise bad manners and loud chewing. Well, Rafal seemed to, for Sophie’s sake. But Agatha knew most Nevers wouldn’t care a jot about tea party etiquette.

So long Rafal and thanks for all the help. I hope you wind up dead.

She had the urge to look back, but nevertheless, she turned away from the carved prince as he took up his sword and animatedly resumed fighting his battle with the ouroboros, blade clashing against scales, as if he were fighting his own violent rebirth.

Agatha was certain that this robbery wasn’t exactly the sort of cooperation Sophie had in mind, but it would have to do. It was the most they could muster up. And what did it matter now?

She gripped the crystal knob to Professor Dovey's office and turned it. Locked. Drat!

Then, she heard a clink and something pin-like skidded across the floor. The carved prince’s tiny sword.

She inserted it into the lock, and silently thanked Rafal. Maybe, he wasn’t so corrupt after all.

She tucked the sword into her pocket, and tentatively entered Professor Dovey’s office. She didn’t look back at the frieze, now converted into an ivory scene of bloodshed instead of victory. Nor did she catch sight of the tiny prince being disemboweled by the ouroboros, gutted through the gaps of the plating in his armor, leaking entrails, and succumbing to a theatrical “death” without his tiny sword.

The miniature black swan banner finally tipped and sank with a metallic clank, fluttering up like a flag of surrender before it settled on the ground.

After he was “killed,” Rafal exited the wall. A decent practice session in dying, he thought. Though it wasn't quite right. And being eviscerated wasn't a pleasant way to go, he found. He mentally crossed that method off his list.

The frieze reverted back to a prince frozen in the motion of slaying the ouroboros once again, banner branded with a white swan, as if Rafal had never been there at all.

Here's rough dialogue from a more skeleton-like section of the outline of TOTSMOV41, not fully "rendered" yet:

Agatha: What's he doing out of the grave?

Sophie: I don’t know!

Rafal: Taking a stroll out and about. Being dead is rather pointless. Had to stretch my legs.

Agatha: Can’t you put him back?

Sophie: Ah, well, I’m afraid the flower didn’t offer me a receipt. Besides, even if I could return him, I wouldn’t. I just got him back!

Agatha: Flower? What flower? Are you all right? Are you drugged?

Rafal coughed to interject.

Sophie spoke over him: It’s complicated.

Agatha: But—

Rafal coughed again and cleared his throat, but the girls paid him no mind.

Agatha: Why?

Rafal: As much as I don’t want this quarrel to end, I think we should flee.

The girls looked back.

And together, the three ran.

I never wanted to be a pile of dirt before, but there you have it. I’ve never wanted to be a freshly dug grave more in my life.

On the occasion of the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, I thought it would be an appropriate time to post some of my old Raphie aesthetics that I'd stored away. I think nearly all of them predate Rise, so yeah, I'm contradicting canon. What about it?

Also, as usual, none of the photos are mine, and I drew inspiration from other edits I've seen. The only things I can claim are the editing done to some of the images and the dialogue in the first image.

If Evers believe in Father Christmas, then would Nevers believe in the Krampus?

@rosellemoon Yes! I remember reading this some long while ago. I don't remember all the details, but it was very funny! I went to take a look at it again, and I love this line:

"The humans have long since finished their latest scuffle..."

Something about the pov here is just so great! In so few words it shows how the Pen views Man, how it's so out of touch that a Woods-ending succession crisis is reduced to a mere "scuffle."

Also, about the "The Storian is homophobic" claim, true.

So far, I've come up with two possible explanations (assuming you meant the "problem" is Rhian directly when you mentioned Fall):

1. The Storian has a narrow range of what it writes, only love stories about princes and princesses, because without an Ever After attached to a relationship, it probably doesn't consider other types of romantic love as worthy of a traditional fairy tale. Then again, did it ever write briefly about Aladdin and Hephaestus in the brothers' tale? (Nevertheless, that tale probably doesn't count because their love was false.) And third, can we pin this development on Rhian? Could he have been the cause of the Pen's apparent prejudice, or was it always homophobic since the start?

2. Every time Rhian pursued True Love in a man, it always ended in disaster, and if the Pen is fixated on self-preservation, it must consider that it would be safer if Rhian stopped consorting with and chasing after strange men because the Storian ended up in danger, in first Vulcan's hands, and then, in the Pirate Captain's. So, maybe the Pen decided to cut off the Rhian-is-dangerously-gay problem at its root. I suspect that it could have turned Rhian Evil artificially for this exact reason: so Rhian would stop seeking out love entirely, and so he'd be destined to be alone forever now that he's a villain because the Pen can trust Evil Rhian over unstable Good Rhian, purely because Evil Rhian wouldn't naively invite anyone into his life (and into the School) whenever he's besotted. Thus, yet again, the Pen's primary goal is and always will be self-preservation, and it cares naught for humanity.

Also, I'd read that oneshot, if you ever decided to write it!

what if the storian was homophobic

@rosellemoon I meant to respond to your other post, but I think I missed my chance. No need to apologize for the second reblog! I appreciate reblogs! And you always have something insightful to say.

I love viewing Rhian as a victim of circumstance and I agree with your view on how the Pen lacks humanity.

And, huh, I am not that surprised that Rhian’s restlessness started the rot, but I don’t blame him. You’re right. I wonder if he went stir-crazy? I mean, no outside relationships, no vacations at all, etc, etc. It sounds like a lonely, miserable life despite all the prestige he gets, as if he were a high-profile prisoner. No wonder he used to be so clingy and so attached to Rafal. More so as a child, of course, but he did miss Rafal, originally, when Rafal left.

Also, that the restlessness came before Aladdin—I wonder if the Pen was getting bored too, and wanted to jumpstart the (artificial) switch for some excitement/its own entertainment? Maybe, it could have been less malicious at the start, or did it always intend to tear down the brothers?

But, that makes sense, if Rhian's restlessness was Evil, and Evil Attacks/always gets the privilege of striking first, like the opening move to a chess match (that's sort of how I picture it, even if war is messier than that) it only is reasonable that he'd be first one to fall victim to the rot.

"...wicked twinkle." - Ok, now this really seems deliberate on the Pen's part. More than ever. I can't believe it revels in Rhian's suffering! Then again, now I can.

And, I think the Pen "transferred" its "wicked twinkle" to Rhian's eyes as I'm fairly sure that book 1 kidnapper shadow "Rafal's" eyes had a mischievous twinkle or gleam to them.

what if the storian was homophobic