Fantasy Mediums

[Demonsoul]

It didn't make sense. Magic wasn't real. So surely this was a dream. But it was so detailed, so believable.

Francesca didn't talk during picnic, ignoring the other kids as she believed them to be fake, apparitions of her mind caused by her dreaming. She didn't want to believe any of this. And before she noticed the picnic was over and the tour began. Francesca played along in hopes of finding some evidence that this was in fact, a dream. She watched the food and trash vanish into thin air. She mentally marked it as neither a mark towards a dream, nor evidence towards reality.

From there they entered the building. A big structure with lots of stairs. Sadako explained the schedule for classes. Francesca marked it as a tick in the reality scoring. It seemed consistent and natural, and so while atypical of a normal school, it did make sense for this school.

Next was the mention of a library, most likely where she would spend most of her time. It got her thinking what type of books would be assigned for their classes and for that matter be classed as nonfiction. With this line of speaking she had to bring up what Sadako seemed to forget. "What books will be required to study for class?" Francesca wondered if it would end up being some occult book she had read in the past, or maybe it would be a mysterious book that didn't exist outside this school. She started to wonder if there was a PDF copy of the book she could find online. It was exciting not knowing what book it would be, the thought of a new collection of books to read was invigorating. She started to hope that this wasn't a dream.

The storage room was far less interesting to Francesca but she did take it to mind. The dorm rooms caught her attention though. The most interesting parts were wondering which room had her stuff after all she didn't want someone else to get her valuables. And the box that apparently summoned ingredients. She imagined it worked via teleporting the note and ingredients, or perhaps scrying the note but testing would need to happen to dictate what. Living on her own for so long has taught her how to cook so she should have ample time to experiment.

She watched carefully as Sadako pulled the stone and vanished. Francesca always thought teleporting would be more flashy with sparks and what not but it felt empty, simply vanishing into the air. When it came her turn she pulled the stone and appeared in water, however unlike some other students she didn't panic. Certainly it was unexpected, but whats the point of expecting anything when magic is involved. When the shark came through she didn't react too much until Sadako mentioned rough scales. This shattered Francesca's sense that this was a dream completely. She had always though sharks would have rubbery skin like dolphins. The more she thought the more it made sense, after all sharks were fish and so they had scales. This was so out of her perception of reality however that it absolutely couldn't be a dream. She collapsed to the sea floor as she finally accepted, magic is real.

Francesca continued to be silent for the rest of the tour. She felt broken, her whole world view flipped on its head. She barely processed the remainder of the tour. At the end she went to find her room. She needed a nap, badly. After checking a number of rooms she found her room. No. 18. She threw herself on her bed, clothes still on. She needed to think. And so that is what she would do.

 

[Psyche]

Spoiler: Reaction to tour

When Skylar heard Sadako clap, and the booming noise that followed, she jumped a little in her chair, slightly startled. She was mildly confused as to why they were throwing trash on the floor, but decided not to question it. Nothing had really made sense so far, so this probably wouldn't either. As it dissapeared, she wasn't too surprised, after all, if they made it out of thin air, would be logical to have a way to get rid of it as well. As she announced the tour, she was excited. She wanted to see how a place like this functioned exactly, and how it did. The thirst for knowledge she always had was awakened, and once the shock of this all had wore off, she found herself eager.

When she was going over that they were learning to become summoners, she wondered why exactly did they have the potential. As far as she knew, none of them seemed to share anything in common, along with the fact that nothing in her life had happened that couldn't not be explained. Also she seemed to have specified it was a school for summoners, is that implying that there are different types of magic schools as well? She guessed that was the most logical, in any video game she played involving magic there seemed to be a skill tree that branched off into different types. Then again, this is real life, not a game. But as far as an hour ago, she had thought that magic is something that only exists in an unreal world. Maybe-

Before she could over think and attempt to dissect the words she noticed the tour was moving on, and she stopped thinking about it all for just a moment and pushed it all to the back of her mind. When the staircase had came into view, her mind wandered back to the girl in the wheelchair earlier. As she was about to comment, she saw one of the magical birds fly underneath her chair. "Guess that solves it.." She had thought to herself.

As they continued on throughout the tour, she found herself fascinated about everything. As she saw the class room, she found the fact that it was covered with paper fairly odd, and wanted to know the purpose of it all, but assumed it would be covered later on.

When she mentioned the library, she found herself wanting to ditch the tour and explore it. Realizing that was a completely stupid thought and action if she chose to do it, she refrained herself. But it didn't quell her excitement. She kept her face impassive, but wanted to research this world as soon as possible, and one of the best places would have to be here. Also the fact that she had always enjoyed reading, and computers helped her enthusiasm as well. As they passed it, she made a mental note to come back here once she had the chance.

Skylar continued following the rest of the group, and when they had reached the phone booth she blushed a bit. She remembered attempting to call the police, and how it had completely failed. It mildly surprised her how she was panicking around an hour ago, and now she was casually touring this place with a mixture of awe, excitement, and a tiny bit of fear. She wondered if they were aloud to talk about magic and the curriculum, or once they return home if they are aloud to show off magic. They never said they couldn't either, but if that was the case, how come magic is assumed to be a fable by the majority of the world? The concept of magic being real was extremely... Foreign to her, but examining everything that had happened, there was no logical solution to any of it.

When they had went to the third floor with the dorms, she was relieved to hear she didn't have to share one with anyone. She was slightly nervous that her insomniac tendencies would annoy whoever she was unlucky enough to bother. The coffee maker had filled her with slight joy, glad that there was a steady source of free caffeine available at any time. The room to her looked nice, was larger then the one she had at home that's for sure. The view made her eyes widen slightly, it was absolutely gorgeous. Looked amazing from up here, and she wondered how some of it looked up close. As Sadoko pulled the chain with the rock, she was nervous to where she had gone to, because they were expected to follow. When a girl with a camera decided to follow her footsteps, she went next and decided to pull on it, nervously and excited to see where it would lead. She wanted to learn and see more about this place, and since Sadako was the most knowledgeable one here, and the tour guide, it would probably be in her best interest to follow her footsteps.

A second later, she found herself deep in water. She found herself panicking for a few seconds, eyes darting around wildly for any source of oxygen until they landed on Isabella. She noticed that despite being under water, she looked as dry as she had on land. Looking down at herself, she noticed she didn't exactly feel wet, and her clothing showed no sign of being effected by water. It made absolutely zero sense, until it hit her. This was supposed to be a magical school, perhaps the water was enchanted to be liveable in? Deciding to take a leap of faith, and seeing if she is wrong she would have died anyhow, she had decided to take a breath. She had felt a wave of relief wash over herself at the fact she wasn't dead, but still found herself shaking slightly.

As the lady spoke and the shark approached, Skylar noted the lady looked relaxed still, but that didn't stop the tremor of fear that went through her. When Sadako introduced the shark as Perez and petted him, somewhat like a dog. She found herself incredulous. Out of everything on the tour, a friendly pet shark made her re-evaluate her life choices and wonder how in the world she ended up in this situation. Perhaps someone did slip something in her drink after all...

She had pulled the chain, being one of the first few, and examined the area they were in. After a little bit, once everyone was there, she listened as Sadako started to speak. She wondered what the purpose of building sand castles were. How is that even training? At the mention of the room for the stubborn magic, she felt a slight urge to check it out, but quickly vanished the thought from her head. Would do no good to get in trouble on the first day, but she did want to know what made it so dangerous.

When she went over the rules, if you can even call them that, she wondered how many people died for them to make an official rule about it. She kind of assumed that that was a given and didn't need to be specified but, apparently not. She felt slightly uncomfortable that Sadoko displayed no sense of humour at that. When she pulled the chain and dissapeared, she stared for another second and wondered what to do.

As the girl on the wheelchair flew off on her bird, she remembered the rooms and their belongings were in that area. She wanted to find her stuff to make sure everything was safe from travel, as well as to make sure it doesn't get stolen by anyone else. With that thought, she left the group and decided to head up stairs. As she approached the living areas, she realized that there was a possibility of going through thirty rooms before she found her items. Might as well get it done with now instead of waiting till the last minute, besides, seemed that only a few others are up here any ways. There might be a larger clutter later with people rushing to find there stuff. She wasn't nervous about claiming a room due to the fact that there seemed to be more than enough rooms and they were all similar and symmetrical.

Skylar had spent the next five minutes going from room to room in pursuit of her belongings, feeling slightly frustrated. She took a deep breath, and opened another door. For a magic school, she wondered how they did not find a less frustrating way of doing this. As she looks in that room for her belongings, her eyes land on a suitcase that looked like hers. She let out a sigh of relief as she approached it and decided to open it. She felt relieved, and looked forward to having her old items back to give her a sense of regularity. When she looked through the items, she was confused as none of them belonged to her. A few seconds after the initial confusion, she realized this wasn’t her bag. She felt a blush make it's way on her face, and felt annoyed at herself for making a stupid mistake. She cursed under her breath, annoyed at the fact that she still hasn't found her bag and she accidentally looked at some stranger's belongings. She hastily worked to get it closed again, so she can pursue her actual items and to not be caught in an awkward situation, but of course, the zipper was jammed. Skylar gave a slight sigh of annoyance, and went working on getting the luggage to close again. QuirkyAngel

 

[hosaki]

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[div class=postinfo] Belladonna Allerton | Location: Halfway House | Interacting With: N/A[/div]
[div class=post]The ease with which Belladonna was processing all of this information surprised even the girl herself. Well, she'd always been the levelheaded one of the family, she mused. Unflinchingly, she reached out to snatch a scrap from the maelstrom of paper which moments ago had been Sadako Kasahara's summon. She examined it: the piece of paper was no different from any non-transforming one.

So Salomonis Regis University was a "summoning" school -- whatever being a "summoner" entailed. After her schooling, she'd be able to perform a parlor trick or two, maybe become a street magician. That idea was only a shade more tolerable than succeeding her mother's business.

Belladonna sat on a stair and busied herself with the paper. She would make a companion for Sadako's napkin crane, she decided with satisfaction. As she started on making the square base, her thoughts began to drift.

At least she knew where she was now, even if it was difficult to believe. Upstate Pennsylvania was quite a ways from California. One almost wondered if Sadako had entirely fabricated their location. After all, all of the students here were technically being held captive -- Sadako hadn't given them any information on how they could leave the campus, should the occasion ever arise. Belladonna doubted any of her classmates had brought a car along, as teleportation via magical means had gotten rid of that necessity.

Various conspiracies played themselves out in her mind, with Belladonna merely entertaining the wilder speculations. At the moment, she was inclined to trust in Salomonis Regis University as a magic school. (Why Sadako and the others were going through the trouble of teaching them, however, was a different matter.)

Having completed the last fold on the origami crane, Belladonna slipped her creation away into her skirt pocket and stood.

Judging from the sound of slamming and opening doors coming from above, most of the others were upstairs looking for their rooms. Well, she hadn't brought any valuables with her, so finding her suitcase featured lowly on her priority list. Rather, she was much more interested in exploring the Nexus.

Entering the nearest open dorm room, Belladonna pulled the weighted chain hanging from the wall like Sadako had demonstrated. Immediately, she felt as if she was falling. She expected to hear the roar of water rushing past her ears, but now that she was no longer caught off guard by the magic itself, she discovered there was a strange absence of ambient sound in this space.

It took a moment for Belladonna to readjust to the notion of breathing freely underwater. Once she overrode that instinct, however, she was able to smooth down her skirt and swim over to inspect the stones chained to the central stone pillar.

She'd come from Room 23, she remembered. If she wanted to look for her room, she would have to pull twenty-nine more chains -- a tedious task, despite being far less labor-intensive than physically walking around the dorms. Alternatively, she could wait until all the other rooms were claimed; then the remaining room would be hers. She liked that idea better.

Belladonna turned away from the pillar to peer at the surrounding environs. Sadako had claimed this space to exist within that tower in the distance, yet a Caribbean reef shark had made its way in... which meant it was possible to walk away from the pillar and reach somewhere. Although she was curious about that somewhere, Belladonna felt in ultimately unwise to stray. Who knew if the magic allowing her to breathe underwater would still hold if she wandered too far?

But this realization was interesting; the Nexus existed as two spaces at the same time, yet it also wasn't fully either. Sadako did say they were off the coast of the West Indies -- perhaps something like this was the true nature of the Bermuda Triangle?

Belladonna cracked a rare smile. Her hand itched for pencil and a sketchpad to capture the more elusive qualities of this location.
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[QuirkyAngel]

It had taken Jesse a while to find the room where all his stuff was. When he did, a dark haired girl was there—struggling with his luggage. He leaned back against the doorway of the room to watch, arms folded as he observed her. She certainly didn’t seem like she was trying to steal anything. Not like he had anything worth stealing in there anyways—clothes, basic necessities, makeup, etc. Important things, like his phone and his wallet, he kept on him.

“You can leave it open if you can’t close it.” Jesse began, his eyes flickering from the lodge zipper to the girl’s expression. Amusement settled in. “I need to unpack anyway.”

The teacher said they could claim any room, but Jesse saw no reason not to grab the room the school had chosen for him. After all, room…28…was as good as any other.

Grinning, Jesse stepped forward and tipped his hat. “The name Jesse McAllister, by the way—owner of that luggage and all the contents within. May I ask who you are?”

He remembered her vaguely as the girl who’d asked a question during their tour of the Halfway House, though he didn’t recall her name ever being mentioned. The tour had left Jesse in a fairly good mood and he was eager to meet up with Perez again, though he knew he had more important things to do. Like use the payphone inform his roommate in New York of his current situation so the guy didn’t panic or anything. Bills still needed to be paid. Boss still needed to be informed of his…unavailability. While Jesse had hit the jackpot with free education and boarding, Arnold got the short end of the stick with his sudden departure—especially since they had agreed to split the bill for the apartment. New York City wasn’t a cheap place to live.

And now he was in Pennsylvania learning to be a summoner—whatever that meant. Good thing Jesse was the sort to take life in stride. For now, befriending a future classmate seems like a good idea. Or, at least, giving them the benefit of the doubt and not making enemies. He hadn’t been sure how to respond when the only rule of the dorm was apparently to ‘not kill each other’.

Psyche

 

[OverconfidentMagi]

Michael returned to the entryway with the intent on gathering a couple of books on magic from the library, to do some basic research on the topic before the first class, but instead of walking the short distance directly to the library he instead walked into the paper-covered classroom and grabbed the stone hanging just inside the door. As expected, he found himself sinking into the not-quite-water inside the Nexus. He let himself drop down beside the broken pillar covered in marked stones and searched through them a bit more thoroughly now. Numbered stones for the student rooms, the fountain, a circle with steam (there was only one of these, so it probably led to the mixed bath), what looked like a shelf, an open door, a trapezoid shape... Michael was curious about that one, so after a moment to contemplate the worse place it may send him, he gave it a tug.

Coming from the almost-water of the Nexus, Michael was unprepared for the very different feeling of a breeze pushing against him. He turned slowly to take in the view from atop a flat portion of roof of the Halfway House. The well-maintained front yard of the house seemed so small looking from up here, soon losing control to the taller and wilder grasses and flowers, and beyond that in every direction was simply trees for miles and miles as far as his eyes could make out. He took a moment to stare, and then reached for the stone hanging from the short metal railing that wouldn't stop anyone from falling.

From the Nexus, Michael ignored the other people who appeared inside, he took a stone marked with an open book and appeared just inside the library. He'd barely taken a step, yet he'd gone from the lecture hall to the rooftop to the library. He shook his head and let out a breath before beginning his search for a good book to start with.



Isaac began to knock on the glass door that led from the balcony to the student room. The door was unlocked, so he could have simply walked in, but for right now he didn't want to startle the person already inside. He hesitated, giving himself time to review his knowledge of Russian. He hadn't spoken the language in a while, so he hoped he wasn't too rusty. Well, so long as he didn't have to write it, he should be good.

He heard a voice that wasn't the little foreigner invalid, so he moved out of the way to lean against the wall outside of the view of the door. Isaac eavesdropped on Hikari and Jacob's conversation, when it could be called that. "I guess she'll be fine," he muttered in perfect Russian. Isaac pulled the chained stone hanging outside the room and disappeared.

His new location was the inside of the Nexus, sinking slowly towards the bottom. Seeing a dark shape in the distance, he held out his hand in the same motion Sadako had earlier. The nails of his fingers scratched against the shark's rough scales as it swam past. "Good to see you again, Perez," he spoke to the overgrown goldfish in the familiar tone one might speak to a house cat. He turned and smiled just as Isabella snapped a picture of him and the shark.

She swam over once Perez swam away, clearly not quite comfortable with the idea of being close to, and definitely not petting, a shark, even if she'd been told it was perfectly safe. Isabella introduced herself, even though Isaac had overheard her say her name earlier and already thought of her as 'the redheaded photographer'. "Where you off to?" He asked her.

"Library, maybe grab a room. What about you?"

"I was thinking of introducing myself to Belladonna over there, then head to the gym to play basketball until I got tired or hungry."

Isabella spun around in the water to look where Isaac had. Sure enough, almost blending in the water and sand, there was a young woman wandering around the seafloor. She snapped a picture of the girl before joining... she hadn't gotten his name. Whoever he was, she followed him in swimming over to the other girl. It was weird how much easier it was to just keep swimming when you could breath the whole time.
hosaki



When Miss Kasahara vanished, leaving the students to their own devices for the remainder of the day, a large portion of the group turned around and headed back up the stairs. That made sense, they were a lot closer to the top than the bottom. But there was a massive gymnasium at the bottom, so of course all of the fun people headed down the stairs.

A young man with short black hair ending in blond raced down ahead of the others, only turning to look back once he'd reached the bottom of the stairs. "Magic!" His wide smile managed to catch a few of the others coming down, Maria even returned his excited call. None of them even knew this guy's name, it was Ian, but even the ones that were still scared and confused felt at least some of that excitement he displayed. He ran across the floor and without any hesitation flipped right into the pool. This broke the last holdouts, and now all of the students that had made their way down the stairs was smiling or laughing.

Maria noticed the still-silent Sarina eyeing the basketball hoops lined up against the wall and suggested a game. With the entirely unnecessary help of Delmar, Collin dragged one of the hoops away from the wall, and soon there was a 3-on-3 game going strong. It started as a 2-on-2 with Collin and Maria playing against Sarina and Delmar, but as soon as Ian got out of the pool he wanted to join in, and Lei was forced off of the bench to even out the teams. Collin and Maria were terrible, so they got Ian, who claimed to be a great at basketball. To be fair, his hyperactive energy and confidence did put him well above the cumbersome wall Collin and athleticism of a rock Maria. But Sarina was clearly in her element, and in a surprise twist Lei was just as good as Ian, so even with the two girls having to carry Delmar their team crushed.



A chubby young woman with a mess of light brown hair opened up the refrigerator and looked around. There wasn't much inside, just some basic ingredients. Since students were expected to eat in the cafe, she figured this was acceptable, for the bare necessities. Next she pulled open pantry door. A few more things, but nothing that really jumped out at her... "Oh!" Lorene grinned triumphantly as she returned from inside the pantry holding a box of brownie mix above her head. This would work.

Soon the upstairs of the Halfway House filled with the smell of baking brownies, guarded closely by a cheerful Lorene. Even Michael, who'd locked himself in the room he'd picked out (the belongings of the person whose things had occupied the room were now piled outside the door in the hallway) was tempted into poking his head back out to see what smelled so good. Haley showed up as well, simply appearing from somewhere down the stairs.
@ everyone that's upstairs

 

[Psyche]

As Skylar was working on trying to fix the luggage she had messed up, she hadn't noticed the newcomer in the room. So when she heard the voice, she had felt startled. Slightly embarrassed at the whole situation, she placed the bag down and stood up to face the bag's owner. She knew he was to be in her class, but nothing else. She felt relieved when she noted he didn't seem angered or upset due to her actions, but amused if anything.

"My apologies, I have a similar bag and kind of confused the two." She felt awkward explaining, and felt the need to add on, "I promise I wasn't trying to steal anything, I would have left it but then the zippier clogged up and was attempting to close it." She said with a slightly sheepish smile.

At the prospect of befriending someone, she was looking up to the idea. If she was going to spend the majority of her time here, it was best to not be alone during the whole school year. Although she felt excited for learning about the school, she also wanted to take the chance to meet new people. She wasn't the most social person at her home, and was hoping to change that.

"My name is Skylar Selene, it's a pleasure to meet you, although once again I apologize for opening your luggage, not intentionally but still." She did hope he would believe her in the fact it was accidental, since it would be a horrid first impression if he didn't.

As she stopped talking for a second, she noticed a sweet scent in the air, she was slightly confused for a second and found herself saying. "Also is it me or do you smell..." She pondered for a second on what exactly it was. Didn't smell like a cake or any sort of cookie she was familiar with, until her brain reached the conclusion of- "Brownies?"

Originally she was probably going to head to the library, but maybe attempting to be social would be more useful in the long run. Besides, books don't vanish and she can read one whenever. Although she was nervous of the possibility of being declined, not that she would completely blame him, she was just a random girl who just went through his belongings. She had still felt the need to ask him;

"Would you like to check it out with me? It smells delicious."

QuirkyAngel