#but I wasn't feeling very human and Alaric wasn't cooperating with me

[smol-feralgremlin]

FebruarOC Day 1: Alaric

“May I see your stone for a moment?”

Fay scowled at him from her spot on the floor and Alaric did his best to suppress a sigh. It wasn’t going to be easy to gain any amount of trust with her and he knew that. Had known it from the beginning. But even the slightest bit of cooperation would be nice.

Maybe he was too old for this. Or too out of practice.

As Fay heaved herself up, he shook himself mentally of the thoughts. It didn’t matter now. She was his apprentice and he needed to get back into practice quickly. For both of their sakes.

Fay removed the small cloth pouch from where it hung around her neck on a simple leather cord and tossed it onto his desk, still scowling at him. “Here.”

“Thank you,” he said as he carefully dumped the stone out into the palm of his hand to examine it.

Noting the starting brightness of the light it glowed with, Alaric dimmed it so he didn’t blind himself. He hadn’t gotten a good look at it earlier. Fay needed it far more than his curiosity needed to be satisfied. A quick look over revealed his initial thoughts to be correct. It was indeed a bit of quartz embedded into its parent rock.

“Do know what it is,” he asked while returning the quartz to its proper brightness as Fay had it so she had it to protect her at night.

“Sparkly,” she answered slowly while taking it back.

“True. But it’s properly known as quartz.” Alaric opened a drawer and found a large piece of quartz. Freed of the rock it had come from and polished to a high shine. “Like this. You finding that was a stroke of good luck. Quartz takes easily to being a part of a beginners spellwork.”

“It was just pretty.”

He didn’t doubt that’s why she’d picked it up. She’d been starved of beautiful things her whole life as far as he knew. A little bit of something that sparkled would’ve been a perfect little trinket to stash away to satisfy some deeper yearning.

“Pretty, and practical. I’d like you to start with this for your first lesson,” he said while indicating the polished quartz. “You made your piece light up. I’d like you to replicate that with the polished bit. I’ve already used it with my own magic before, so it should be easier than if you were working with an untouched quartz.”

Fay’s expression darkened. “I don’t want easy.”

“I don’t want an exhausted or half-dead apprentice,” he replied gently, but firmly. “We are building a base for you to work from. I didn’t say it would be easy either. I said easier. You’ll still need to work to get this piece to light up as well.”

“If I already did it once, why do I have to do it again,” she demanded.

“Do you know how you did it?”

Fay opened her mouth and froze like that for a moment before closing it. Alaric sighed a little while pushing the polished quartz towards her. “The first time was in far less than ideal circumstances. You were scared and wanted light. So you subconsciously pulled any scrap of light from your surroundings and forced it into your quartz. Now I’m asking you to do it on purpose. Sit with this piece and focus on your breathing like I’ve been teaching you, and then try putting light into it.”

She took the piece with a slight glare. “Fine.”

Alaric sighed as she went to sit back into her spot. As she stared at the quartz, he watched as she at least made an effort to breathe as he taught her. While she tried to wrestle with this lesson, he pulled out the journal and recorded the conversation and the notes he had so far on Fay and how she took to her lesson.

[evilpenguinrika]

well i caved and decided to add the Archer class for Leo because I think having him be a Bard (once I hit lvl30 of Archer class) would be fitting.

Like sure, character backstory wise, Leo would read up on grimoires that Hope and Josie would have (as well as grimoires from Freya) and maybe even learned some of the bare basics or just watched Hope and Josie because he's the only Mikaelson kid that isn't a supernatural creature and is purely human. But he wants to do his best to research and learn so he could hopefully help his three older (supernatural) siblings one day should they need it. Which is why I figured the Scholar (and Astrologian--and I guess Summoner as well but my reasoning for Summoner needs to be tweaked. And I guess I need to expand more on why Astrologian would also be perfect for him--ALSO MACHINIST TOO MAYBE) job would be perfect for him in FFXIV. And he doesn't like seeing the people he loves hurt or injured bc of what happened when he was five before he got adopted by Hope and Josie (you can read about that here!) so it's a bonus that the Scholar job is categorized as a Healer (also more on scholar bc it's 1:13 am as i am typing this and my brain is not cooperating with me and they have a little blurb about the Scholar anyways that makes more sense to read than if I attempt to paraphrase)

But then came a thought.

In my very first Hosie fic, Sad Bedroom Eyes, I think i had Leo be really into plays and theatre and performance and stuff. And then I thought "Oh yeah, Bard would fit really well with his character, and maybe he'd be really into the performing arts when he gets older as well".

And in FFXIV, the starting class for Bards is an Archer. And then I had another thought: wasn't Josie and Lizzie's dad like, a vampire hunter or whatever? Had all these weapons and shit at his disposal. I think--character backstory wise--it would also make sense for Leo to want to learn how to fight if he is to ever support and protect his siblings. So he'd for sure go to grandpa Alaric and be like "grandpa can you teach me how to fight with all those cool weapons you have" or something idk.

Like ok, obviously Hope and Josie would not be happy their youngest is trying to learn how to fight. I mean maybe Hope would be happy to hear Leo wants to be able to hold his own and maybe learn how to defend himself--but the sole purpose of learning how to fight with weapons is to protect them and his siblings? His family that are all supernaturals???? His mom who is a Tribrid???? His other mom who is a Siphoner but also a Gemini witch and also pretty strong????? And not to mention his siblings, a Tribrid, a Werewolf, and a Siphoner--all equally strong and powerful????? Leo, honey, it's okay. YOu don't HAVE to learn to fight to protect them???

But Leo wants to anyways because this is his family and he NEVER EVER wants to lose them like he did with his other parents.

Because aside from learning magic despite not being a witch, he'd probably be able to find some creative way to incorporate what he knows of magic/potions (I like to think Leo is more potions-focused than spells since, again, he's human and maybe there are some potion spells that don't necessarily REQUIRE magic? idk i could be wrong, i never watched TVD, only TO and LGCS so feel free to correct me) into how he fights with weapons or something.

So that's why I caved and had Leo--in the game of FFXIV--pick up the Archer class and then hopefully later, become a Bard (since Bards still uses bows and arrows in the game).