Another infinite and inky night laid across the Institute, warning of the brutal winter hovering on the threshold of seasons.? Meanwhile, inside, the students hummed along, so absorbed by their studies and ascensions that they barely noticed the world beyond the school?s protective walls.? Within the necromancy lab, there was but one exam table occupied, and that was of the Apprentice Barron, her miniature team assisting as she formulated a powerful spell for the inert and decaying figure laid ceremoniously upon their slab.? Suddenly, intricately-woven arcania filtered from her skeletal fingers into the dead flesh below, inspiring its dormant cells to something resembling life.? The lump of putrid flesh stirred, it's vocal cords awakening with an macabre groan.

Bryn?s head tilted slightly.? For a lump of flesh so grotesque and massive, it was quite docile: a willing tool for the mistress who summoned, it's stinking, hulking form awaiting her command.? And this the apprentice issued, in the form of a clandestine whisper only for her newest thrall; it was strange that such lush lips would dare to crowd so close to something so vile.
And her team gasped gently as the mass of rotting meat rose from the table, clumsily tottering upon long-still limbs to gain a stride - one that carried him out into the night, intent on his newfound mission.

Meanwhile, seeking both to further his understanding of his school of choice and to be away from the sometimes exasperating fools that were his peers, Alphyon had stolen away to the necromancy annex, quite oblivious to what he was about to stumble in on. In his grasp was an old, leather-bound tome with runes set in gold that had slowly begun to fade and peel over time. Though old and dilapidated, the book had power, or the knowledge necessary to obtain it, and so he cared reverently for the dusty tome, keeping it tucked close to his chest as he crossed the grounds and stepped into the depressing annex to make his way to the labs.?

In the absence of her corpse, Bryn slipped her uniform-clad figure onto the now-empty table, perching elegantly there as she received the praise and awe of her assistant inferiors. It wasn't until Alphyon began the descent into their gloomy depths that he felt something might be amiss--or rather, someone might be occupying the chambers. Initially, he had been quite excited to explore the necromancy annex and go to his lessons, thinking to find a number of like-minded individuals that shared his passion; some were truly invested in their art, but he found them dismal and boring, the rest were less than thrilled to be amidst the necromancers and their decaying puppets. He half considered turning away at the thought of company, he had been driven there mainly to be away from his fellow students...but curiosity was ever a vice he could not resist, and so he continued the descent until he came upon the spectacle of Bryn being praised as she perched on an examination table. A slender white brow arched upward at the scene.?

And as Alphyon entered the lab, Bryn?s colorless eyes honed upon him sharply, the cold gaze no less cutting than a physical blade.? Suddenly, the mindless praise of her associates seemed as weak as watered-down wine, for she knew the drow wouldn't bother with simple niceties.?The esteemed apprentice inclined her chin silently, making no move to outwardly acknowledge him, and in return, the corner of Alphyon?s mouth twitched in a slight sign of his amusement as he returned the small, silent sign of greeting. Then he continued forward, past the obviously impressed group of associates to a table that sat a safe distance away from Bryn and the others. He emptied the contents of his bag onto the table, unceremoniously upending it to let them spill haphazardly. He then swiped the bag away with a flick of his wrist and carefully organized the contents. One was a human jawbone, the other was a shriveled hand ending in claws that had once been dangerous and powerful, but were brittle and fading. The item was a pair of slitted eyes in a small vial that clinked noisily, threatening to shatter. The last item to be adjusted was nothing more than a small, red velvet pouch that when he pulled open, poured a little mound of ash onto the table. When the last item was sorted out, he opened the tome he held so possessively and flicked to a page about halfway through. A finger traced lines of narrow, scrawling text before he released the book to let it hover in the air just to his left, where he could read it with barely a turn of his head and still keep his hands free to act accordingly.

As the foremost personality of this little niche, Bryn couldn't let the drow's designs go unmolested.? The severely slender figure slipped from the table, unnatural sleekness incorporated into the composition of each sultry step as she closed in upon the IAP's newest novice.? "Alphyon," purred her dark voice, once he was close enough to discern the vibrations of an intimate whisper.? "It's good to see you again."

"I fear I have missed the cause of all the excitement,? said he, ?You must have put on quite a show, to earn such praise. What did you do?"

The simplicity of the syllables, the frank coldness, was perhaps more disarming than the words themselves.? ?Don?t worry about that, novice,? she replied, a false sweetness coloring her words.? "What are you doing?"

"Looking for something," the thick tome that hovered in the air beside him flicked to the next page of its own accord as he stepped closer to the table. "Practicing," he added casually, glancing up from his work to watch her circle the table. "Who are they?" he jerked his head to the side, toward the group of spectators who had been praising her moments before.

Bryn?s colorless gaze flickered back to the other students, who were currently immersing themselves in other endeavors, chatting and loafing and other general idleness - the perfect facade of a smile didn?t slip, not for a single moment, but her voice dropped to a conspiring whisper, as she leaned slightly forward, toward him, her palms resting on the hard surface of the table: ?My little cult of personality... or something." With as much playfulness as one so cold could muster, she continued to ask: "Would you like their help?"?

"I require no assistance from...anyone," Alphyon chuckled and shook his head at the offer. "Thank you," the book finally rested on a specific page and he glanced at it momentarily before reaching out and curling his hand upward in the air. His fingers contorted, squeezing inward as though he were choking the life out of some invisible being in front of him. The shriveled and clawed hand on the table in front of him contorted in a similar manner, but the rest of the items appeared undisturbed.?

"Not even your sister?" Bryn asked lightly, her visage a perfect presentation of pale-and-rose, bloomingly youthful, vibrant but for the woefully-vacant essence.

"She does not assist me in my studies, we have very different schools of focus," the drow replied, smiling politely across the examination table at her. The hand sprang to life and crawled over to the jawbone, its wrinkled digits curling tightly around the object.?

Bryn?s chin inclined with another small piece of information gathered, noted, and elaborated upon with her follow-up, "Oh?? What is her school of focus?"?

"Divination, followed closely by Transmutation. Why so curious?"

As smoothly as silk, with a lightness far more ebullient than her cutting aura, she responded: "Just making conversation."? Her head tilted faintly, sending a few tumbles of rich brunette over her skeletal-sharp shoulder.? "And I know asking questions makes you nervous, defensive, and maybe a little aggressive.? I like it."

"You like it?" he paused his ritual to peer curiously at her with crimson eyes. "Why?" next, the pair of strange eyes in the little vial shook violently before he plucked them up and dropped them into pile of ash. Then he took the jawbone and shriveled hand to place them on the pile as well. "You like putting people on edge?"

A small portion of her attention was devoted to his tasks, but primarily, the unnerving chill of her attention chiseled slowly into his resolve.? "I do," she responded generously.? "I suppose that must be very annoying, for...what did you call women?" she feigns a thoughtful recollection, "Oh, 'tools' or 'toys' or such.? It must be quite vexing to be put on edge by a mere servant."

A quiet laugh escaped him, sounding much louder than it was as it echoed in the cavernous chamber. "Annoying? No, no," his head shook, a trickle of fire shot up from the ashes and lit the hand up like old parchment. "Amusing. Curious. But not annoying. I've suffered much worse than you, Bryn," he chuckled again and waved his hand through the fire until it died and left the hand blackened, the vial had cracked and the jawbone showed the faint signs of scorching. "Nor have you put me on edge with your questions. You aren't trying hard enough."

"Oh thank goodness," she moaned girlishly, the widening of her eyes wholly innocent if not for their complete lack of soul, for the sheer, lethal wickedness of her smile; pretty, plump pink lips stretched over perfect teeth, "I would hate to have a repeat of last time, when it seemed you were rather on edge."?

Fingertips traced the edge of the worktable in a stark, provocative reminder of when he bent her over it.

?That?" he smiled across the table at her, the expression came quite naturally to him. "No, I was not on edge, I was intrigued. Aroused, even. But not on edge," his hand lowered to rest over the burnt, ashen pile between them and a sudden wind swirled around them, but it did not extend throughout the rest of the chamber. With it came whispering, incoherent words spoken in the drow tongue as the ashes were swept into the air. "Quiet for a moment, please."

Thus she slipped past him, the tiny hook of her pinky linking casually into his fingers, and with a hurried and silent step, she led him up the shadowy corridor of steps exiting the lab.? As they were about to emerge in near the lobby of the necromancy annex, something shifted, almost imperceptibly, the darkness of the stair bleeding into something more natural, and as they ascended the final step, they found an open sky above them, graveyard dirt beneath their feet, and a thousand stars to light their landscape, which was (unsurprisingly), a cemetery.

"Over here," she said calmly, leading him through a maze of plots to a isolated little monument: a column lifting proudly into the night, broken and adorned with a ceremonial wreath of olive.

Under the stars, the drow could see the graveyard plain as day, eyes sweeping over the grounds to examine them critically as she led him along still. When they came to the column standing up against the night, Alphyon's fingers slipped from the hook of her pinky and rose to brush his hair aside. "And what is so important about this?"

"I dug up the body that was buried here," she admitted evenly, the prior, false sweetness surrendered to a determined calm.? "I was working on constructing something -- something small -- and I knew from the marker that a young person was buried here.? A broken column always symbolizes a life cut short."? She paused briefly, the moonlight painting her profile lovingly, "It was only a child.? A girl.? But the body was...unnatural."

His gaze cut to the side to examine her thoughtfully. Under different circumstances, he might have been allured by the way the moonlight bathed her so prettily, but Alphyon was ever devoted to his craft if nothing else. "Unnatural how?"

"It had been preserved.? When we dug it up, the grave was new.? The body itself reeked of arcania, of necromantic ritual, and the flesh of the corpse looked as perfect as the living, without an ounce of decay.? But look -"? The apprentice knelt in the damp earth before the monument, her fingertip tracing the date of death.? "She died two decades ago." She glanced over her shoulder, her chin dipping in acknowledgement of the handsome drow. "It sparked my curiosity.? The girl was buried with a locket, which I've kept.? But if you look here -- " Bryn fluidly lifted to her feet, rounding the column to trace a fragile fingertip along a minuscule inscription along the column's vertical ridges. "I'd never seen this language before."

The figures were foreign to both drow and human tongue, ancient and cryptic, rudimentary.?

"Master Smout'n was able to identify the language - it is thousands of years old, no longer used except in the most pedantic of spells.? He wasn't fluent, but he lent me a book." Bryn?s empty eyes met his, seeming perhaps slightly less cold in the warmth of the moonlight.? "You can't tell anyone about this, Alphyon."

He studied the inscription closely. "I think I may have seen this before in one of the books in Raithmoore's library, it seems distantly familiar, though I cannot say for certain," he shrugged, straightening to place his hands on his hips as he eyed her once more. "Why would you tell me all of this? What did you dig up the body for in the first place?"

"That doesn't matter," she snapped softly, her still figure lingering closely to his as they both absorbed the unfamiliar lines.? "I still have it, the body, but I think there's something else here."? Again, her finger traced the inscription, and it glowed faintly in the path.? "I can't be entirely certain of the meaning, but I translated most of it.? It speaks of sorrow, of eternity gained - it says something about sisterly love and one living for both through the power of ritual. It tells the sister where to find her - a city of the dead - should the child ever rise."

She paused.

"What do you think it means?"

He chuckled suddenly, that sound of amusement blossoming into full, rich laughter that filled the graveyard as he turned to look at her. "It means you have a map leading you to a powerful necromancer, one who has obtained immortality. Perhaps they are a vampire, a ghoul, maybe even a lich...though this is sloppy work for a lich, most likely something lesser."

"Why do you say it's sloppy?"

"Liches are secretive beings," he explained calmly. "That one would leave such an obvious trail is...sloppy."

Ah," she murmured, her disappointment well-hidden.? "Then perhaps it isn't worth my time."? She turned away abruptly, empty eyes scanning the gravestone-littered horizon.

"No," he lifted a finger to command her silently to stop and listen. "No, this is worth all of your time. Sloppy or no, a lich is still a powerful being. She may be lacking in caution, however, she is obviously powerful--if she did succeed. Liches can teach you secrets you will never learn from a book, Bryn."

The pretty necromancer glanced over her shoulder, hands planted firmly upon the slender curve of her hips.? She did not smile, or nod, or acknowledge him in any fashion.? She was as cold as the late-autumn air. Finally, she spoke softly.

"Alphyon, if you share any of this, I will murder you."

That made him laugh again, though he did not doubt that she would attempt to. The ever self-confident drow simply did not believe that she was capable enough. "Rest assured, Bryn, I am adept at keeping secrets. I will help you learn more of this possible lich, as well."

"And what do you seek in return?" she bargained frostily, turning slightly toward him.? The moonlight only enhanced his allure, which she was attempting to stifle.

His tongue made an appearance to sweep along his bottom lip, he could still taste her. "In return? Why, nothing more than the knowledge that I have made an ally, Bryn. When the subject of my early ascension comes up, I will need a person or two to vouch for me. I'm sure you could help me convince Smout'n after we're finished with your own little project."