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All in all, Lezard Valeth felt his Sorting had gone rather well. He had met a kindred spirit of sorts. More than one, really, for the Sorting Hat had recognized his potential and Sorted him into Slytherin. Lezard decided he very much liked the Sorting Hat: its mindset was so very much like Lezard's own.
(Read: perverse and more than a little insane.)
Now there was the silly business of detention to deal with. Lezard had no immediate plans to overthrow the current system of order at Hogwarts, and therefore would humor its bureaucratic machinations for the time being. Turlough's threats of torture at the caretaker's hands meant only amusement for Lezard, since the things he'd done to himself with the aid of the Philosopher's Stone (no, not like that!) had rendered him impervious to such attacks. Indeed, when the very Lord of the Undead had rushed at Lezard to halt the Sovereign's Rite, the Lord's bulky body had passed right through Lezard, as though the mage had become immaterial. Which in fact he had, selectively. He could be as solid as he wished (how else to hold his valkyrie love?) or dissolve into motes of light.
He looked forward to baffling the Hogwarts staff.
Therefore he was less than thrilled when, at the end of his Sorting, a little green house-elf came shambling up to present him with a note: Schedule change. Report immediately for your detention to Groundskeeper Vislor Turlough at the mangosteen grove.
Irritated, he followed the elf out of the castle and onto the grounds. What he beheld pleased him: the edge of the grove was perfectly regular, a crescent seen on the horizon, and he knew that a view from above would show it as a green circle, unnatural, his mark on the landscape of this country. A summer breeze fluttered his cloak and wafted the scent of tropical trees toward him.
As he entered the grove, he tapped his fingers in a light rhythm along the Wand of Apocalypse's shaft.
The groundskeeper awaited.
(Read: perverse and more than a little insane.)
Now there was the silly business of detention to deal with. Lezard had no immediate plans to overthrow the current system of order at Hogwarts, and therefore would humor its bureaucratic machinations for the time being. Turlough's threats of torture at the caretaker's hands meant only amusement for Lezard, since the things he'd done to himself with the aid of the Philosopher's Stone (no, not like that!) had rendered him impervious to such attacks. Indeed, when the very Lord of the Undead had rushed at Lezard to halt the Sovereign's Rite, the Lord's bulky body had passed right through Lezard, as though the mage had become immaterial. Which in fact he had, selectively. He could be as solid as he wished (how else to hold his valkyrie love?) or dissolve into motes of light.
He looked forward to baffling the Hogwarts staff.
Therefore he was less than thrilled when, at the end of his Sorting, a little green house-elf came shambling up to present him with a note: Schedule change. Report immediately for your detention to Groundskeeper Vislor Turlough at the mangosteen grove.
Irritated, he followed the elf out of the castle and onto the grounds. What he beheld pleased him: the edge of the grove was perfectly regular, a crescent seen on the horizon, and he knew that a view from above would show it as a green circle, unnatural, his mark on the landscape of this country. A summer breeze fluttered his cloak and wafted the scent of tropical trees toward him.
As he entered the grove, he tapped his fingers in a light rhythm along the Wand of Apocalypse's shaft.
The groundskeeper awaited.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-28 07:14 pm (UTC)No, it wasn't enough, and yes, some irrigation would be needed, but he's got an ax to grind.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-28 08:06 pm (UTC)(( For sealstones, and to see what they look like: some awesome person put all the Valkyrie Profile 2 FMVs up on YouTube, and the one in which the party encounters its first sealstone is here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B0WR2DxOrs). Lezard geeks out describing sealstones in his smooth cheesy voice, which imo makes the FMV worth watching ;) Because I don't have the patience to watch the FMV over and over and the description is kind of nonsensical video-game-logic, I've posted a quick transcript in Lezard's journal (http://arrogantmage.livejournal.com/1132.html). ))
no subject
Date: 2008-07-29 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-29 02:36 pm (UTC)In his most long-suffering and aggrieved tones, he says: "Very well." (The utterance, and the tone, would have been familiar to his old traveling party: Leone, Arngrim, Dylan, Alicia, especially that fruitcake Rufus, always prone to inconvenient objections.)
Bloop! Lezard Valeth is gone.
In the very center of the perfectly circular grove, a cascade of sparks begins to geyser from the ground. The sparks are accompanied by a more mundane spray of dirt, as though a very small but powerful gopher is at work. Amidst this spray, there emerges upward a hardened and twisted stave of petrified wood, twiglike in shape with a cradle-like crook at its end.
Petrified wood is not really wood: it's stone, its minerals leaching into the places where rot has eaten the wood away. Yet it retains the magical properties of wood. It's akin both to tree and rock, air and earth.
Beside the twig, a second shower of sparks shoots up from the ground, this one taller, as tall as a man. With a sound not unlike the clash of steel against steel, it rushes up to take form: Lezard Valeth.
If someone had been standing where he emerged, they totally would have suffered so many thousands of hit points' worth of damage.
"Behold the dais," he says happily, holding his arm out to indicate the twig.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-29 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-29 03:40 pm (UTC)Only slightly disappointed -- he can't really expect proper appreciation from someone who possesses all the imagination of a shelled escargot -- Lezard shrugs and bloops away again.
This time, he's gone for a good ten minutes. Will he ever come back?!?!?
Unfortunately, yes.
He reappears beside the dais, his hands cupped around a pouch of a fine and mysterious material. From the pouch he withdraws what appears to be absolutely nothing. He seems very proud of this nothing. He must be a really talented mime.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-29 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-29 04:21 pm (UTC)Which he does, with care.
Immediately the temperature within the grove raises to tropical levels. Lezard, though cloaked and booted and ready for all-weather travel, doesn't shed so much as a drop of sweat.
"It may have other effects," he says casually. "If so, those remain to be seen. It didn't have any adverse effect on me when I brought it here, anyhow. Its name is Eternal Summer Blessing."
(( This is a noncanon sealstone I've invented. All the sealstones have names ending either in Blessing [for positive effects], Wrath [for negative effects], or Law [for neutral effects, e.g., doubling experience points]. ))
no subject
Date: 2008-07-29 04:27 pm (UTC)short shortssummer clothes, unless he spent hours in there.He nodded. "That will be good enough for A. Go back to watering."
no subject
Date: 2008-07-29 05:01 pm (UTC)See, he's already built his own world outside of space and time. Never mind that Lenneth utterly destroyed it; the point is, he has world-building experience. His world had grasses and trees and clear streams of water. Granted, it also had a lot of treasure chests scattered around, and odd pathways made of engraved stone, and sundry such features not readily explicable. TV's "Trading Spaces" crew would have a field day with Lezard.
Anyway he can definitely make some streams of fresh water.
Pointing the Wand of Apocalypse and twisting the fabric of the universe to his will, Lezard causes a series of springs to break free from the ground. They overflow into long rivulets bedded in cracked earth.
"I haven't named that spell yet," he says to Turlough.
Then, because the grove lacks a little je ne sais quoi, he teleports treasure chests into a few choice locations. Up in a tree. Behind a conveniently-placed bit of shrubbery.
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Date: 2008-07-29 05:05 pm (UTC)why?Turlough arched his eyebrow again. "Oh all right, you had the detention anyway, might as well make it worth your while."
no subject
Date: 2008-07-29 06:53 pm (UTC)Quite typical of short-sighted ordinary mortals that he should be given punishment rather than applause for this feat. Whatever. His pleasure in a job well done far outweighs his annoyance at Turlough's insistence he must serve a second detention.
"I'll report to you in a week for further pointless drudgery," he says airily. "In the meantime, I must notify the grove's owner that Improvements Have Been Made."
no subject
Date: 2008-07-30 01:44 am (UTC)And he also needed to owl a professor so he can borrow a classroom. Wednesday seemed the most approchable...