#lisa isn't lazy she's just efficient

[dandelion-wings]

Writing Lisa in self-sacrifice scenarios is always more difficult than doing it for a lot of my other faves. She's not Jean or Barbara, who peg their value to service, or Kaeya or Rosaria, who think they need to redeem themselves, or Eula or Amber, who have something to prove. She's someone who looked at whatever unnamed horror lurked at the climax of her achievements and decided to fuck right off and live a comfortable, peaceful life free of any further ambitions, thank you very much. I respect her and love her, but she needs her arm twisted to make her take risks. XD Fortunately, I do enjoy making up grand dramatic threats to raise the stakes!

[dandelion-wings]

My headcanon is that Lisa is the biggest fucking powerhouse in Mondstadt except Venti and possibly Albedo and/or Klee, but we are never going to get more than 4-star performance from her in canon because we just aren't worth the effort (and don't need it because we're a powerhouse ourselves). When it's something that is worth her full power--say, Jean, or Razor, or Klee, or the overall safety of Mondstadt, if in any of those cases the other defenses available are outmatched--she can absolutely blow everything short of an archon and out-of-control-Albedo away.

And then needs a month to recoup because she's spent her entire spoon supply and then some, but she's willing to borrow against future spoons for as long as the crisis lasts. Unlike Jean, she knows she can and will take the time to recover them later.

[dandelion-wings]

As the Ordo Librarian, Lisa is responsible for many of the Ordo's secrets. Including the personal secrets of her friends among the Knights. But little as she wants to stir the pot, sometimes true wisdom is knowing when the knowledge one holds should best be deployed. (Or: five times Lisa didn't tell on her friends, and one time that she did.)

@canonical-transformation and @theabysscomeshome bullied me into this one via time travel (me re-reading an old conversation). Everything here is completely on them. :P

[dandelion-wings]

for whumptober: jean or lisa for “magic with a cost”? thank you!!

Thank you for the prompt! :> I was going to just go with Lisa because I've done less whump for her, but somewhere along the development process I went, "why not both?" Which made twisting Lisa's arm (c.f. yesterday's post) that extra bit harder, but it was fun to do! I hope you enjoy it too.

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ETA: Now on AO3.

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Even an illustrious member of the Hexenzirkel can make mistakes at times.

Lisa hadn't been thrilled when Alice co-opted the doors to the restricted section to install a passage to her Theater Lobby. The guests passing in and out of the library are not always quiet, and it makes entering the actual restricted section *much* more difficult. The one advantage is that now, everyone who's poked and prodded her over the years as to what may be down there now believes that it was Alice's little play-place the whole time. Only a handful of people know otherwise.

Unfortunately, the restricted section doesn't just hold books. Not everything there has dealt well with having such strong, otherworldly magic nearby, and Alice... well, Lisa has long known that Alice doesn't bother to cleanly seal her spells. Klee isn't a patch on her mother when it comes to collateral damage.

Though that seems a bit too understated a term for what they're looking at.

"What *is* it?" Jean asks, her voice hushed with horror. "Something of the Abyss?"

"No," Lisa tells her. "I'm not impressed with the Hexenzirkel right now, but I must admit they're very good about keeping Abyssal influences out of any space they decide to meddle with. They would never take the easy way out when making a new domain."

Not that Jean likely knows that partitioning off a space where the leylines touch the more malleable space of the Abyss *is* the easiest way to make a domain. Jean isn't here for her expertise, but because she had been the first one Klee had found to report that there was "something funny" behind the door. In the real space behind the door, not Alice's portal.

Jean is also the only other person currently present in Mondstadt who's actually allowed into the restricted section, or to know what everything in it *is*. She, like Varka, has a general understanding of the tomes and artifacts kept here; unlike Varka, she's put effort into learning which ones are most dangerous and why instead of just asking Lisa to keep an eye on them all. Lisa can sure she's trying desperately to match this sprawling mass, glittering tendrils of elemental energy creeping out of the room it's in to dig into the walls and floor and ceiling, with her own mental inventory of the place.

For her own part, Lisa feels almost preternaturally calm. When they had rounded the corner and seen this glittering maelstrom bulging out of the room it had been in, door torn down and mostly subsumed into the mass--it is, after all, mostly Dendro--she had been terrified for one hot, awful second, the taste of metal all down her throat. Lisa can't think of any better way to have a Nail hammered into the city than to let an unauthorized branch of Irminsul, laden with the forbidden knowledge concealed beneath the Ordo, arise within its walls.

Then she had remembered Jean behind her, and Klee waiting anxiously up in the library, and Sucrose in the lab next door, and Noelle dusting upstairs. All the knights in and around this building. All the people of Mondstadt, going calmly about their daily lives. That was when the calm had fallen. She doesn't know how long it will last, but she'll make every second count.

"*This* actually comes from one of the restricted books themselves. The Lawrences collected many books about magic in their attempts to more and more strictly control Mondstadt. A few thought they could somehow become the next Decarabian. But, well, when you're collecting books about foul magics, sometimes the book *is* the foul magic. This one was written in elementally-charged ink on paper woven in part out of Petrified Trees. Which is a very foolish thing to do. All you need is some resin... which I'm sure Alice used in her own work."

"So when Alice designed her Theater, there was enough resin in it for this to revitalize? Like a tree in a Domain?" Jean asks.

"Yes," Lisa says, proud as she would be of any student making a connection between what they've been told and what they already know, "very good. Not in the same way, of course. But once it woke, it started to take root and seek for leylines. That takes elemental energy, so it's consuming all it can from the environment. You can see how it's going after the Geo in the walls now. There was Dendro in the other books in there, so I suppose they've all been lost."

She sighs in regret. The knowledge they'd held might not have been forbidden, but there was a reason the Librarians of the Ordo had spent generations keeping those books hidden underground, safe from Celestia's gaze. What was in there might have had value, someday, in helping defend Mondstadt against threats the gods would rather they not even know exist.

"All right." Jean's voice is stronger now that she feels she has a handle on the situation. "What can we do about it?"

Her eyes shadowed with worry, but her hand flexes with eager impatience on her sword's hilt. Through the fear and false calm, Lisa almost smiles. Of course it was *'we'*, even though Jean has no idea what she faces or what to do. She won't abandon this to Lisa's expertise.

Perhaps it's unfair to let Jean participate, young and unknowing as she is. Lisa knows what taking control of this situation will cost anyone involved in it. She has paid that fee before, for a much more foolish cause. It would be kinder to tell Jean to step aside and tell her there's nothing she, unskilled in magic, could do. Jean is full of the kind of potential that Lisa has long since burnt out; isn't it waste to risk burning that, too, when Lisa could in theory bear the full cost? But she's too selfish to refuse.

"We'll need a seal. A very strong one. Luckily, that's something I'm very good at. Unluckily... making it will be very dangerous for us both."

Two years of helping Cyrus seal Hermanubis, over and over, until it stopped breaking through to overwhelm Cyno and he could develop his own control. She'd done a great deal of research in those two years. Along with all the other learning she'd been doing at the Akademiya, of course.

She had left her notes for them when she left the Akademiya, and Cyrus and Cyno far surpass her now. But this thing is taking root far too fast. There's no time to send for either. There's only what Lisa knows, from all that research and from one painful trial, about containing anything that feeds on elemental energy. It has to be blocked off before it *does* reach the leylines. There are no emergent outcroppings in the city, or close around it, thank Barbatos (quite literally, Lisa suspects), but if the roots continue to lengthen, they'll eventually reach deeper flows.

"What will we need?" Jean asks, as if Lisa hadn't said a word about danger. She's so charmingly reliable in moments like these.

"That adorable book Alice gave Klee as her catalyst," Lisa tells her, not without regret. "And two more catalysts from the armory. If we have a copy of the 'Skyward Atlas', I would prefer that, but I know we have copies of 'Sacrificial Fragments' and 'The Widsith,' and both of those would work. I already have my Favonius Codex," she adds tapping the familiar tome, passed down from one Ordo Librarian to another over the centuries.

It, like Klee's book, will be a shame to sacrifice, but she's written out copies of what it contains, just as her predecessors have before her. Those are locked away down here too. Binding a new copy in the requisite metals for magical channeling is simple enough.

Jean nods, salutes her, and turns to rush back up the hall to the stairs.

That leaves Lisa to begin designing the seal. This is going to have to be a strong one. *Very* strong, to lock this would-be leyline tree in. Fortunately, it doesn't have to literally encompass the sprouting mess in front of her; it just needs to do so symbolically. Otherwise, Cyno would have had to stand in the middle of a seal diagram for most of his childhood. Such seals rely on the caster's will to give that symbol force.

Will, and magical energy. If Lisa was relying on her Vision, that would be enough for this--the elemental strength she can bring to bear with it, reinforced in this case by Celestia's magic locking the energy that flows through Visions into a rigid and obedient course, would do the job, though it might cost her Vision to do so. That's a price Lisa, ambivalent about that very power, would be willing to pay alone. But an elementally-fueled seal would only serve as more sustenance for this sprout. This one has to rely on another source.

Very little magic in the modern era doesn't rely on the elements. Even when scholars speak of "old techniques," they're talking about herbalism, which still involves the elemental affinities of certain plants, or tapping the leylines, which remains an occasional if dangerous recourse for those without Visions but had been much more common before the Cataclysm. But there are even older techniques from before the establishment of the Thrones, some still practiced in various cultures under the guise of traditional healing, or martial arts, or superstitious rituals, that draw on another source entirely.

Her own lifeforce isn't a price Lisa *wishes* to pay. Neither if Jean's, whether or not she's willing--which of course she is, as a Gunnhildr, even if she doesn't fully understand the danger Lisa had mentioned. The danger Lisa isn't willing to explain, too close to old memory, too likely to rouse the fear that she's barely holding back.

Lisa draws her seal slowly, carefully, refusing to let that fear, however bitter in her throat, impede her work. She does use her Vision to crack two blocks in the walls, creating niches where she can set the catalysts she'll use as anchor-points. Her Codex she goes ahead and sets on the floor beneath one niche before drawing the appropriate lines around it.

Sumeran seals tend to use threes, Liyue prefers sevens, and Inazuma likes fives. Khaenri'ah was emphatically locked into pairs, and Fontaine has a terrible, unstable tendency to use just one anchor-point that Lisa hopes will change now that it's nearly wiped them out. Mondstadt doesn't have a sealing tradition in the first place as far as the Akademiya is concerned, but Lisa knows better. What else are the Four Winds and their Temples?

"I have them," Jean says, appearing behind her with her arms full of books.

The armory did have a Skyward Atlas; Lisa places it above the Codex, and Klee's book in the other niche. She hesitates between the small stack of copies of Sacrificial Fragments (ones Lisa had very precisely copied herself, each blurred and illegible line, while demanding exact replicas from Wagner for the binding) and the single copy of The Widsth before choosing one of the first. It may matter that it's in her own hand.

"It's growing fast," Jean says, audibly unnerved.

Lisa had been deliberately keeping her eyes averted as she worked. Now she looks. The tendrils have grown thicker, plunging deep into the stone--not breaking it, but absorbing it as they go. The door is gone, and the mass is taking on the distinct shape of a trunk. There are at least three questing taproots.

"We'll take care of *that*," Lisa tells her. She reaches up to undo her Vision from her throat, passing it back to Jean. "Our Visions will only get in the way. Set them by the exit, please. Mine will reinforce the wards on that door nicely, just in case."

She feels naked without her Vision. Even with all her suspicions about what it is, what it means, the cost of using it, it's still a part of her, and a well-worn and familiar tool. Which is why she can't risk drawing upon it in a panic.

Facing the burgeoning growth before her, Lisa breathes in deeply, tasting more bile bitter and metallic in her throat. By the time Jean returns, she has the shape of what they need in her mind.

"We need to extend this seal to encompass the whole root, and block it off," Lisa tells her, and holds out her hand. "Put your right hand within the circle on the wall, and your right foot within that one on the floor. Good." Lisa follows suit on the left. "Now, look with your Elemental Sight. Can you see the seal?"

"The square closing off the hall? It has no elemental signature...."

"If it hadn't already started eating the walls and Albedo wasn't up on Dragonspine, Geo might have worked. Though with that much Dendro, I doubt it. The technique we're using does have a physical cost," Lisa adds, because it wouldn't be fair not to warn her. "We both may end up incapacitated, or worse, when it's over, but we have to put up with it until the end unless we want this to go *very* badly."

Jean squares her shoulders and straightens her spine. "If that is so, place as much of the burden onto me as you can. I am the better suited. Though I mean no offense."

The fond affection that warms Lisa at that so-characteristic declaration is tinged with guilt. "None taken, cutie. Now, focus on the right-hand corners of the square, and imagine them pushing outward, into the corners of a box. Try to do so as you imagine the dandelions of your breeze," she adds, aware of Jean's personal mnemonics, "so that it will manifest in your Sight."

Jean nods and sets her jaw, and Lisa feels the seal start to shift. Lisa has to moderate her own efforts to match Jean's pace and not deform the spell. Already Lisa can feel energy starting to siphon out of her, a gradual lethargy like an afternoon slump, not yet the torrent she knows will come.

The far corners of the box slide past the trunk, laying out the dimensions of a boundary not yet formed. "Stop," Lisa says, and Jean stops pushing, holding steady, maintaining position with a warrior's rather than a mage's discipline. It's good enough. "Now the walls of the box. This will be the hard part. That tree is aware enough to resist."

"We won't let it pass," Jean vows.

Already, the tendrils are reaching further, closer to the intended boundary. "Jean, *now.*"

Walls shimmer into existence in their Elemental Sight. For a moment they simply glow, clear and white, not yet fully solid, but drawing more and more strength. Lisa blinks against the growing lethargy of it. Then a creeping tendril brushes against one forming barrier.

Confused, curious, more tendrils react out, seeking along the boundaries of its confinement for a way through. They pause for a considering moment as they determine there is none. And then the roots *erupt*.

The tendrils lash against the barrier of the seal, and Lisa hears Jean cry out. Her side holds steady, though, even against such onslaught. Lisa's waver as she feels her skin ripping open, as if she herself had borne the lash. She gasps, tasting iron, and steadies them by force of will.

"This will harden them," she manages to say, "but it will get worse," and then she starts to recite the verbal seal.

More tendrils slam against the walls of the box, and more open welts bloom with them. Lisa's voice falters. Ripples appear, on her side, where the tendrils rake the seal.

She can feel Jean reaching out within their joint working, the visualization that's far closer to what Jean has trained in before, and take hold of Lisa's half of the box. Taking more of the burden, as she'd asked. With guilty relief, Lisa lets the brunt of that go and focuses on the chant.

Her fingertips and toes are beginning to tingle. Fatigue, not merely lethargy, creeps into her bones. Jean's fingers tighten on hers in a way that suggests she can feel the numbness, too, while welts continue to split her flesh. Lisa adjusts her grip to hold her wrist. They can't lose this connection.

The walls are holding strong by the force of a Gunnhildr's will. Word by word, Lisa hardens them further. They begin to take solid form, almost, *almost* visible without Sight as well as through it. The tendrils beat harder against them, those three thick taproots trying to bore through. Jean sets her jaw, only a low moan escaping through gritted teeth. Her breath hitches, then steadies.

Under Lisa's tingling fingertips, her pulse hitches, too. Hitches, steadies, then hitches again, beating too-fast and uneven, fluttering and frantic with more than just the palpitations of fear and fatigue. Lisa tastes iron again, and this time the terror isn't for herself.

"Jean, let go," she says, between verses of the chant. "I can finish this alone."

Jean's grip tightens around her wrist. "I will not fall before this is done."

Lisa feels the walls soften and takes up another round of the spell, but she dares a sideways look at Jean as she does. She's white-faced where her cheeks haven't cracked bloodily open, and her lips are going blue. The clumsiness of her grip says that the numbness must be all through her hands, and she has the wide-legged stance of the unsteady.

She is the stronger of them, it's true. Physically, she has more stamina. But she runs close to her limits all the time, no days at peace, no time to recover. Lisa hoards her strength and barely ever expends it. She has more reserves than Jean has endurance.

Twisting her arm free, she slams her elbow into Jean, pushing her backwards. Jean stumbles, crying out in fear and horror as her foot leaves its circle, and her hand slips from the niche. Lisa steps into them, spread-eagle, and seizes all four points of the seal.

For a moment the box's corners weaken. Sensing weakness, the tendrils lash out again. Lisa feels her skin split, raw and red, and doesn't try to hold back her scream. Then she launches shakily back into the spell. One more chorus--two more, maybe, with the interruption--and it *will* take permanent form.

Numbness crawls up her arms, up her legs, tingling at her joints and beginning to tighten her scalp and turn her face to rubber. It's worse than the welts, though at least she can't feel them in the spots where it touches. The fatigue crushes downward; she can feel the drop through her body as it tries to crash into unconsciousness, jerks her head up against it, and feels her heart hammer with adrenaline as fear and fury buy her the time to recite the last line of the last round of the spell.

The Skyward Atlas and Klee's Dodoco Tales are gone from beneath her hands, the Favonius Codex and Sacrificial Fragments no longer at her feet. Barriers shimmer into place between the eight anchor-points of a Hypostasis-perfect cube. The tendrils flail wildly and the remaining chunks of wall within the box melt into pure Geo, the sprout consuming the last dregs of elemental energy it can touch. Then, its taproots having failed to set, it starts to dissolve.

"Give it a few hours, and we can take that back down. Though we'll have to do something about that hole it's left behind," Lisa says, and then the drop hits again and this time takes her with it, right into Jean's arms.

She's only fully out for a moment, though she's groggy and fuzzy-headed as Jean hauls her up to the section door, lays her down, and summons up a breeze from her Vision. The scent of dandelions revives her. The open welts still burn, tender and raw, but the breeze has at least stopped their bleeding. Her limbs and face and scalp are still numb.

As are Jean's. Lisa can see her, breathing steadily and easily now, pinching her own fingers. "Is this permanent?" she asks with all the worry of a knight who depends upon her body's skills.

"No, cutie," Lisa assures her, heady enough with relief to give her an indulgent smile. "It may last a few weeks, though, so you'll just have to take a break until it fades." She tries to reach out and take Jean's pulse, but she can't feel it, either; she'll have to trust in the color coming back to her face, and insist they follow up with Barbara as soon as they're able to leave. "I do mean you'll *have to*. If you don't rest and recover now, you may pay for it for the rest of your life. I have some experience on the subject."

"You do? That would explain.... Is this why you're so often tired?" Jean looks at her with too-keen eyes.

Lisa smiles up at her. "One of the reasons. Don't worry, Jean. The last time I did something like this, I was all alone. There's much less risk when working together."

"I am grateful you allowed me to take it on at your side, for so long as I could," Jean says, reaching out to clumsily grasp Lisa's hand.

She squeezes it, the pressure dull and distant through layers of nerveless skin. Lisa squeezes back as best she can.

"I couldn't have done it without you," Lisa tells her, and feels the truth of that, the relief of that, humming in her chest.

[dandelion-wings]

a sort of noodling-around opening to one of the whumptober prompts that didn't end up working once I'd gone to the park and stared at the water for a while, but I do still like it:

Lisa is fully aware that she's one of the most powerful Vision-users in Mondstadt. Albedo has depths that, should they ever rise, she knows will bury her. The day Klee's unrefined raw power blossoms into directed expertise won't come until long after Lisa is dead, but she prefers not to play even with that fledgling fire. Master Diluc *might* give her a run for her money, though he has weaknesses she doesn't think he even knows about, which she's catalogued thoroughly for... reasons that no longer apply, now that he and Kaeya are on steadier ground and he's treating Jean respectfully. (Dragons, gods, and the ghosts of both are on a completely different scale, and it wouldn't be a fair comparison. Though Lisa likes to think that she'd leave marks, if it came down to it.) But even Jean and Eula and Kaeya, however dashing, would never stand a chance. And if they wouldn't, then how could anybody else?

[dandelion-wings]

I jumped into co-op with Eula and Lisa a lot today, specifically searching for low-level players who needed help with specific bosses/farming, because it's fun to go into a lower-level world and let Eula one-hit KO a baby boss! >>;; And it did give me some Lisa/Eula brainworms about them traveling together for some assignment Jean gives them, and Lisa deliberately seeking out people who need a hand with something, even as Eula gets frustrated with the detours (it's a mission for Jean!), because she likes being admired herself and, even more importantly, Eula deserves to be viewed with awe and thanked for her efforts by people who aren't pre-prejudiced by knowing she's a Lawrence.

And then someone starts admiring Eula (and her martial prowess and her dance-like maneuvering and her prominent muscles and...) a little too closely, and Lisa finds herself unreasonably jealous. A reasonable amount of jealousy is fine. She knows she finds Eula attractive, she finds most of her co-workers attractive, she's been dealing with that like a reasonable woman for years. But this is considerably more than reasonable, and when did that happen?

Meanwhile, Eula is more flustered than flattered, both by this person and by Lisa laughingly encouraging people's admiration (though not this person's, which is... meaningful, Eula suspects, and she'll think about it more closely when she is not repeatedly prying their hand off her knee over dinner), but she's... starting to think that maybe Lisa means it when she compliments Eula, and it isn't just the teasing she's been taking it as. And if Lisa is, in fact, scheming to put Eula in a position where she's getting complimented, then obviously Eula owes her some payback....

[dandelion-wings]

good morning! what a great day to remember that (a) Klee has a mom that she loves and who loves her, even if she makes questionable parenting choices, (b) Razor has wolf parents who y'know died to save him and human parents whom we had a whole event about him being invested in learning more about, and (c) Lisa can be a very good teacher and a valuable mentor who cares about her students and is a formative influence in their lives without replacing their actual beloved parents as a parent, because having additional loving, caring adults in your life who are not parents and you do not view in a parental role is a valuable and important part of childhood! Having affection for children in their care still does not automatically make a teacher a mom!

[dandelion-wings]

I was flipping a Lisa/Diluc idea around in my head at the barn and entertained a throwaway line where Lisa comments that she'd be annoyed Diluc hadn't even looked at her breasts in this dress if Kaeya hadn't already told her he was immune (my ace Diluc headcanons are strong XD), and my brain instantly filled in the backstory scene: Lisa and Kaeya together at the Angel's Share. Lisa is wearing her most how-does-she-not-fall-out-of-that dress because Jean was supposed to join them when she finished her work, but, well, she hasn't shown, so they've both gotten very drunk and are playing a little game with each other of seeing how many drunk people they can make stumble or spill their drinks by flashing their respective cleavage. Lisa is in the lead by a long shot, but Diluc is her white whale, because she knows Kaeya will think it's funny but she can't get him to so much as look at her decolletage, no matter how she poses or what maneuvers she pulls when he comes over to refill these drinks. Finally she pouts aloud about it, and Kaeya laughs and tells her that Diluc didn't even notice Jean's breasts when he was sixteen years old and telling everyone who would listen that he was going to marry her, so he doubts there's cleavage out there that's going to attract his attention.

[dandelion-wings]

Honestly that last photo made me remember the story I was outlining to @theabysscomeshome on Discord the other night that was mostly about Lisa and Kaeya living out this post, with Diluc as the awkward and unfortunate landlord. XD But also had a side-element to the effect that the dog was actually Diluc's; it was a stray he'd found all torn up and with its eye recently torn out, which gave him. significant emotions. to find on the road. And he was afraid the shelter would put it down, so he got it patched up and then took it home saying he would find it a home himself and, uh, very much failed to do so. But he did [irresponsibly] let it wander freely around the complex without a tag on the collar, and Kaeya found this one-eyed dog curled up all sad and whining against his door in the rain, and it clearly wanted to wander so even after he adopted it he [irresponsibly] let it out, and....

It would be difficult to write with those interlocking scenarios, but it's fun to think about! XD

(There's also a side-thing wherein Lisa starts dating Jean, who is still Kaeya's boss in this modern AU, and he doesn't know she's Lisa's new girlfriend and she doesn't know he's Lisa's... Jean does not actually know how to classify "Lisa's roommate who is sometimes her dog but whom she does not fuck." Finding out that this is Kaeya actually clarifies it for her. Yes, this is an arrangement she can see Kaeya in.)

[dandelion-wings]

thinking about the Jean/Lisa Beauty and the Beast AU I thought of a while back and while I still really like the concept of it, overall, and I think it would be a very fun shipfic, while exploring Fontaine this afternoon my thoughts wandered in a slightly different direction than I'd had re: the beginning:

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"And why *were* you stealing from my garden, Miss Barbara?"

Barbara tries to keep an eye on the ball of Electro bouncing around her, zipping from one high place to another in the cramped, book-filled room. But its route takes it behind her, and she thinks if she spun around trying to keep track, she'd just get dizzy. She catches herself clutching the plants in her hands a little too tightly and forces her grip to loosen before she crushes the fragile leaves.

The voice crackles a bit, underlaid with the same Electro that seems to make up the... seelie? She's never seen any seelie like it, but then, who knows what Electro might to do one. Make it speak, for one. Aside from the crackle, it's a pleasant voice, audibly a woman's, with a sweet timbre that Barbara thinks could be lovely in song if adequately trained. She's not certain that it's the seelie, but there's no one else visible here.

"I didn't realize it was your garden," Barbara says, her own voice higher than she'd like. "I mean, I knew it was *someone's* garden, but- I thought it was abandoned! I didn't think anyone actually lived here."

"So you thought the wolves weeded for me? Not that they wouldn't try, the dears, but they can't tell a dandelion from a carrot. And Razor's convinced them that nothing good is green." The voice sighs, but it's affected, and the voice sounds more amused than mocking. Barbara tries to take comfort in that.

"I... didn't think about it," she admits. "When I realized your garden had Sumeru Roses, I had to pick them. They take forever to come in from Sumeru! I have a potion I wanted to try, for- for my big sister, and I...." Had stolen without a second thought, even though the garden was clearly tended to. Barbara can feel tears welling up. "I'm so sorry!"

"Thank you, sweetie," the voice says, gentler now. "I accept your apology. No crying in the library, now, moisture is bad for the books."

The ball of Electro whips around one last time, then comes to a stop in front of her, hovering over the reading pedestal in the middle of the library. With a purple glow, a book rises from one of the nearby shelves and floats over to land on the pedestal, cover flying open and pages fluttering as some invisible force flips through them until it settles on a particular spread.

"Is this the potion you were trying to make?"

Barbara peers at the book, fascination overcoming her fear. "Yes, I think so. The book in the Ordo library was damaged, so the whole recipe wasn't there, but... the parts that are here are the same. Could- could I copy this? Please? I know I've already been rude to you, and I am sorry, but I really need this!"

"Of course you can, sweetie. And I'll let you keep the roses, too. Though... you'll have to brew that here, and we can send it off with Razor to Mondstadt. Fortunately, I do have excellent potion-making facilities."

"Why can't I take these back to Mondstadt?"

"Oh, sweetheart." The voice goes low, now, the crackling undertone almost overpowering the gentle tones. "Didn't anyone tell you? This tower, and I, are under a curse."

[dandelion-wings]

deep in my extremely specific and self-indulgent gender headcanons this morning

I keep thinking about. Kaeya knows being trans is a thing. He shows up at the Dawn Winery just as Crepus is starting to arrange fantasy hormone potions and shit for Diluc. And as he starts figuring out Mondstadt gender roles, which are a bit different from Khaenri'ahan ones, he knows he doesn't quite fit into their idea of A Boy any more than Diluc fits as A Girl. But the problem is, he doesn't fit as A Girl either. He's something different, and when he thinks about going through everything Diluc is just to end up playing another role that only sometimes feels good and right to take on... that's a lot for an endgame he isn't even sure he wants. So he'll just. Stuff all of that in a black box in the back of his head and pretend it doesn't exist. He has a lot of such boxes and he's good at ignoring them! And if he leans flamboyant as he gets older, that's fine, no one minds (make assumptions about his sexuality, but don't mind), and beside, he's a knight so some gender deviance is allowed

(because Jean is the first model he's introduced to for knighthood, even more certain of her destiny than Diluc, and the first binary Jean ever internalized was "knight" vs. "lady," later extended out to "knight" vs. "civilian." Eventually she finds out there's another binary and she's assigned one half of it by other people, which is sometimes annoying and inconvenient but mostly fine, but it doesn't matter half as much as her self-identification as a knight. Which is 100% fine with her mother and thus never gets countered by someone she considers an authoritative source)

and Kaeya's feelings only get reinforced when Lisa shows up. She makes her own hormone potions and she seems very happy with her gender and presentation, and he actually steals some of her mannerisms because he's 19 and still trying to figure out the right role to play now that "Diluc's shadow" is out, and she's a cool almost-30-year-old whose confidence in her own identity he envies. So he does have a moment of, maybe he could ask her--but she is extremely feminine in presentation in ways that, again, he only sometimes wants, so. Back in the box that goes! No point in opening that up

(meanwhile Eula got told she was A Girl simultaneously with being told she was A Lawrence--her own character stories imply that "oldest daughter of the clan" has some kind of significance--and therefore learned How To Be A Girl alongside How To Be An Aristocrat and gives them the same weight. Which is to say, from her own voiceline: "I was forced to learn all of the rules by heart, but even I don't take them that seriously." She is not particularly concerned about her own self-identification, because she trusts the people she cares about to take her as she is beneath the show, and that's all thar matters)

and Jean mentally genders both Kaeya and Eula as knights (Diluc was so emphatic about being A Boy that she accepts that comes first for him, he's just a knight too in the same way she's a woman too, and Lisa is unquestionably a lady), and ngl it's probably how she thinks about Amber too, and that's really what matters, isn't it, in the end. Which both of them would find acceptable if she said so aloud, if for different reasons

[dandelion-wings]

What are your chronic illness headcanons?

I mean, I'll be honest, I'm sort of vague and broad with all of them? And will go with different specifics for different fics or fantasies, though I have a... fraught relationship with medical research (it's the medical anxiety) and also kind of prefer not to be too specific; as someone with chronic conditions of my own I personally dislike reading too-specific fictional accounts of them, and I also don't want to risk misrepresenting something I'm not familiar with.

That said!

Jean: There's lots of things that fainting, weakness, and vertigo, which are the only canon symptoms we have, could originate from, but I like to give her a heart condition! Being very vague on what, but generally at minimum an arrhythmia or something that it's a symptom of, because that's one I'm pretty familiar with, and also can be easily identified in the field (for hurt/comfort purposes) and have some hand-waved treatments. It is badly exacerbated by her stress level, which is also great for hurt/comfort.

Lisa: Either chronic fatigue or something that causes fatigue as a side-effect. I am very broad, and usually also very vague, with this one--the longer we go without that "her lifespan was halved" thing actually getting brought up in canon the more I assume that Hoyo decided not to go with it after all, but it's always lurking as a Possible Cause if it does come up in canon, and I often prefer to leave that open. (It's also I'm not something I'm personally familiar with except as a side effect of other conditions.) I had several continuities in my head where Lisa was chronically ill beforehand, but @canonical-transformation's excellent Girl Underwater solidified it for me as my dominant and permanent headcanon, whether or not it actually comes up in something I'm writing.

Kaeya: You mean my son Kaeya who has every (mental) disease? :P More seriously, leaving aside that you can posit so much going on in his head (though I do lean towards depression), alcoholism is in fact a chronic disease, and another one that I am pretty familiar with. I've also seen the argument that the tendency to write him as a sickly kid, which I often do (on the theory that if he's from underground, another preferred headcanon of mine, he probably never met 99% of Mondstadt's usual diseases beforehand and they would've run roughshod over his immune system), should probably lead to him having physical/immune issues as an adult, which I find plausible but generally don't go too far with just because he already has enough going on.

Anyway, Lisa is 100% honest and upfront about her problems and expects accommodation, as she should; Jean admits she has a condition because it's pretty hard to deny, but minimizes it to a deeply unhealthy extent; Kaeya has nothing wrong with him and wonders why you would imply that he does. Obviously this list is also in order of how difficult it is to help/treat them from the outside. Barbara appreciates Lisa deeply, wishes Jean would cooperate more but is doing her best, and isn't even touching Kaeya because that's waaaaaaay above her paygrade.

[dandelion-wings]

I was trying to do the Autumn's Regret treasure map, accidentally aggroed local legend "Liam," watched Jean, Kaeya, and Eula get KO'd in rapid succession and expected to die... and then managed to get him stuck in the lake, threw up a lightning rose from Lisa, and alternately Electro-Charged and kited him with her until he was dead. A long, grueling fight, but it was very satisfying to see the Witch of the Purple Rose show her superiority for once! :3c

[dandelion-wings]

Sometimes you have writing plans for the day pre-made, but then you wake up in the middle of the night from a wretched nightmare, can't fall back asleep, and end up twisting bits of the nightmare together with bits of canon to torment your blorbos with....

This is a very rough version of last night's 'can't get back to sleep' bedtime story, and I know what happens before and after and how it would go if I expanded it out (and @theabysscomeshome and I have spent today kicking around the sequel where Lisa and Kaeya actually reach Mondstadt XD), but I wanted something I could write in the two hours I was hanging out at the hospital this afternoon so I crunched it down into something that almost fit into that window. Maybe someday I will write the longer version (as if I need more WIPs), but hopefully this will exorcise the worst of the brainworms so I can actually work on the stuff I'd planned for the next week!

---

This is the third time Lisa has been left alone with Anatoli's most prized specimen.

She can't say she's developed a routine with him so soon, but he doesn't look surprised when she deactivates the shield around his cell and steps inside. Lisa reaches out, slow and careful, but all her care can't keep him from flinching when she touches the clasp of the shock-collar he's wearing. She keeps the static of her Electro Vision firmly tamped down so that at least she won't set it off as she takes it off him.

The shock-collar isn't supposed to keep him from talking, only from too-sudden movements. But it's tuned to its highest sensitivity, and she's seen it light up, crackling, when he cries out. She would go silent too if any exclamation ran that risk. Besides, no one on Anatoli's research team cares to listen to what he has to say.

He swallows a few times, his throat working, and looks up at her from under the loose fall of uncut bangs with his one remaining eye. His voice is small and hoarse and thick with suspicion as he asks, for the third time, "What do you want?"

"I have a question for you, Kaeya."

It's almost what she'd said the last two times, though she'd had many questions then. She knows his name (Kaeya Alberich; he'd looked at her warily as he gave the surname, as if he expected her to recognize it, and seemed almost disappointed when she didn't), and how long he'd been here (six years, by his best estimate), and how he'd come (he'd snuck onto a ship to Sumeru, looking for his family, and been caught in the desert by bandits who sold him on), and what, exactly, they've done to him (though there was only verifying what Anatoli's records already say). She knows that, whatever Anatoli says, the curse hasn't twisted his mind as it has his body. He's reacting exactly as any rational human would to the conditions he's lived under for the last six years.

Lisa would start biting people too, if they only ever touched her to cause her pain.

"Just one?" For all the suspicion, she can hear a thread of amusement in his voice.

"Just one, tonight." Lisa holds up a finger. "Wait a moment, though, sweetie. I have to do something first."

She steps back out of the cell, leaving the shield down, and takes what would look to any casual eye like a Canned Knowledge capsule out of her robes. It takes only a moment to sync with her Akasha Terminal; she waits for the double-chirp that confirms it's scanned her thoughts and is replicating them for the Terminal, then takes it off and sets it aside. If she's being monitored, the terminal will only pick up that she's still here, asking Kaeya the same set of questions she has the last two times she was trusted to supervise him.

Unless Lord Sangemah Bay has sold them a false bill of goods, or is cooperating with the matra. Lisa doubts the second, and has to simply trust the merchant's reputation on the first. They've certainly paid heavily for all she's sold them.

Once her terminal is, hopefully, disarmed, Lisa takes another of their purchases out and steps back into the cell. She sees Kaeya fix a wary gaze on the little device in her hand--shaped and sized almost like a terminal itself--and smiles at him as warmly as she can muster with her skin prickling with trepidation. She's very aware that she has her back to the door. Anyone who comes through will have a few seconds' advantage on her, and Lisa has no good excuse for what she's doing. None but a moral argument that Anatoli's team doesn't care to hear.

Cyrus had made it directly and passionately, to Anatoli and then to the Sage of Spantamad, and been turned away both times. Cyno had made it bureaucratically, filling out all the paperwork necessary to report a breach of academic ethics, and had seen it dismissed out of hand. By the Akademiya's ruling, Kaeya Alberich is a monster, not a human, and thus a designated test subject to be treated as Anatoli's team sees fit. He has the curse of Khaenri'ah, after all. It's active in him, manifested in his blackened and Cryo-lined right arm; that Anatoli's own records showed that he had triggered it deliberately in Kaeya's second year here didn't have any effect on the Darshan's decision.

Their options had been to take it all the way to the Six Great Sages, or to try another tack. The Six Great Sages, by a ruling of four to two, had determined that Cyno, in his youth, was a similar such test subject, and *he* didn't bear the curse of Khaenri'ah, nor elemental powers from the Abyss. None of them had expected that it would go any better in this particular case.

Lisa had already been slowly becoming disillusioned with the Akademiya. This was just the last nail in the coffin. She doesn't mind burning her whole career down behind her when she goes, and that's why she's here, late at night, holding the key that will deactivate the wards on Kaeya's cell.

"Kaeya, would you like to get out of here?"

"*Yes*," he says, in that low, hoarse voice, strained by desperation and a hope she can see him trying to restrain as his eye meets hers.

"Good. I will ask you not to do anything rash once I get them off of you. We don't want to set off the alarms."

Kaeya holds rigidly still as Lisa undoes the wards, one by one, that hold him physically restrained and his Abyssal powers in check. She can feel the cold rising off the stump of his right arm as she looses that ward, the Cryo veining it eager for release. It's the one she's tensest for, ready for him to lash out, senseless as it would be--he has no reason to trust her, and no reason to think her anything than another of her tormentors. She'd stood by and watched while they took what remained of the lower limb off to the elbow just two weeks go.

(She'd had to build trust. After Cyrus and Cyno's efforts, Anatoli was wise enough to be wary of her. Even after she'd repudiated Cyrus as too soft-hearted and said some truly horrible things about Cyno, it had taken time to convince him that she was truly breaking away from her academic clique. He hadn't let her start taking shifts supervising his specimens until after she'd managed to keep herself largely impassive through the collection of that particular 'tissue sample.'

If he'd known what she'd been fantasizing about at the time, he wouldn't have wanted her within a mile of his lab. Lisa has a perfect test designed for *his* pain tolerances, if the opportunity ever happens to arise.)

But he doesn't attack, as rigidly still when she'd finished as when she'd begun. For a moment Lisa wonders if the key had actually worked. Then he takes a deep breath, shivers all over, and lets it out. On the exhale, he rises smoothly to his feet.

"Robes," Lisa tells him, mostly so that he won't panic when she goes for the bag she'd brought with her tonight. Tossing the notes at the top aside--she won't need them anymore, and may Anatoli have whatever joy he may get from her careful records of Kaeya's answers--she holds out the bundle of fabric to him, then turns away.

The cold at her back puts a chill down her spine, but at least now she's looking at the door. She just has to trust that he'll maintain his restraint even with her back turned.

It seems to take a tortuously long time for him to get dressed, though Lisa has no intention of rushing him through something he hasn't been allowed to do since he was, by his own accounting, eleven. She doesn't look down at her jammed terminal or back over her shoulder at him. She watches the door and counts the seconds passing in her head.

Despite the tension of the wait, Kaeya finishes well within her time window. Lisa turns to see that she's guessed his size well. He still looks swamped in the robes, even though they end at his ankles, but that's an unavoidable consequence of the caloric pittance Anatoli budgets for him. At least it helps hide the missing end of the right arm.

She holds out her arm to him instead of reaching for his. Kaeya hesitates a moment, looking at her warily, then grasps her wrist with his left hand. His grip is far stronger than she'd expected for how few fingers he has left, almost bruisingly tight, but Lisa makes sure to keep smiling at him as she starts for the door.

The corridors of the lab are dark, barely lit. Anatoli's tight-fisted grip on mora will help them here. Lisa leads Kaeya through the turns in utter silence and a tingling aura of static and cold. She can't entirely suppress her Vision, jangling with both her own nerves and the close presence of Abyssal power, and she can't expect Kaeya to suppress his own abilities when control has only ever been imposed upon them from outside. That he's not giving her frostbite at the moment will have to be good enough.

Humid air hits them like a wet sheet across the face as they step out of the climate-controlled laboratory and into a summer night in Sumeru City. The heat damps the chill, the moisture the static, and Lisa sighs in something not quite relief. Kaeya gasps aloud, then flinches, going tense, no doubt anticipating the collar's buzz. Lisa turns to give him another smile.

In the next breath, he lets go of her and jerks away sideways, flinging himself down the path at a run. Lisa hisses under her breath and puts a hand to her Vision. It's her own fault; she should have expected that. But she can't let him get away.

Electro flashes at her throat, and a gleaming elemental barrier rises to his left as he careens down the street. His atrophied muscles are working in her favor, even with desperation driving him. He flinches away from the barrier and turns the other way, towards the rightward path. Lisa scrambles after him.

Just after he rounds the corner, she hears a grunt, and a yelp, and a crack of Electro. She comes around after him to find Cyno clutching him tight. Kaeya is limp in his grasp. It's his instinctive reaction to the shock-collar, which will keep reacting until he stops moving; Cyno's jolt must have felt just the same. The look on his face is one of open betrayal.

"Don't try that again," Cyno tells him, setting him back on his feet as Lisa approaches and holding him there until he takes his own weight. "If you run into any other matra, they would know you weren't a student, and you'd be lucky if they sensed the Abyss on you and killed you outright. It's more likely they would take you for a confused Elezear patient and return you straight to the Akademiya."

"And right back to Anatoli," Lisa adds. "Kaeya, this is Cyno. He's going to help us get out of the city."

"A *matra* is helping you steal a specimen?"

"A friend of mine," Lisa says, firmly, "is helping me get a badly injured young man away from those who injured him."

Kaeya gives her a dubious look, but doesn't argue further.

"Follow me," Cyno tells them, starting off down the side-street towards the darkness at its end. "We don't have much time if we're going to slip out between patrols."

Lisa holds her arm out to Kaeya again. He shakes his head, but starts after Cyno. She follows him, watching his increasingly heavy step. This is more exercise than he's been allowed for years, and their night has only just begun. Forcing contact, though, is only going to make him more nervous. There has to be a point at which he unleashes his Cryo in earnest, and she'd rather not push him to it.

Their path leads them through narrow gaps between buildings, alongside the brightwood stands behind them, and, eventually, out to the farmlands on the city's northern side. By the time they break out onto the slopes down to the river to its north, Kaeya is stumbling outright. This time, when Lisa offers him her arm, he takes it and leans into her a little. Lisa can feel him shaking through the robes.

"You're sure you're not going to get in trouble for this, cutie?" she asks Cyno. "You can't make General Mahamatra and reform the matra from within if you get accused of helping me out."

"There's a Kshahrewar scholar ready to swear that I've been drinking with him all night. If we'd run across a patrol and had to deal with them, there might have been trouble, but no one has any reason to guess that I noticed that hole in the schedule before you took advantage of it."

"Good."

As they reach the shore, a faint firefly-light glows just above the water. A literal fire-fly light; there's a handful in a jar, sitting at the feet of a young man in a canoe. Lisa can't make out much by that dim illumination, but he has long, pointed fox's ears, and she sees the whisking of a fluffy tail behind him.

"These are your passengers?" he asks Cyno, standing to look Lisa and Kaeya over.

Cyno nods, then turns to Lisa. "This is the Forest Ranger I told you about. He'll take you wherever you've chosen to go. Make sure to avoid Port Ormos. The matra there recently got an updated connection to the Akasha, and they'll know exactly what to look for before you can get there. But Caravan Ribat and Gandharva Ville are still on the old system and should be safe."

"Which way do you want to go, sweetie?" she asks, turning to Kaeya. "East or west?"

He jerks his head up and blinks at her as if coming out of a daze. Then he shakes his head. "Not back to the desert."

"East it is, then."

"Good," the ranger says. "I hate the desert. There's a mercenary and her company that I've heard good things about out that way, if you needed a trustworthy guide, but there's no guarantee you'd be able to hire her. It's not a good idea to go straight through Gandharva Ville, since we might be seen by other Forest Rangers, but I can take you past it and over the border to Lumberpick Valley in Liyue by myself."

"Thank you, cutie." Lisa gives him a warm smile, then turns to help Kaeya into the canoe.

He collapses onto the bench more than sits on it, and all the tension thrumming through him can't keep him from keeling over onto Lisa's shoulder once she sits down beside him. She puts an arm around him to steady him, but keeps her touch light so that he won't feel trapped. The ranger exchanges a wordless nod with Cyno, then pushes away from the bank.

They start off down the river, picking up speed as they go. Lisa yawns, giggles a little when Kaeya echoes it, and then giggles more when the ranger yawns, too, and grumbles under his breath about it. Settling more comfortably onto the seat as Kaeya grows heavier and heavier against her, Lisa looks up through the trees and the mist at the first gleam of light off in the east as they make their way towards the dawn.

[dandelion-wings]

Hi! For the Unusual Fic-Specific Asks for Authors, I'd like to ask two things about Broken Ground! First, perspective flip: I think you mentioned Lisa being more present at first and then cut out of the scene, so I'd like to know more about that :> How was it from her point of view? And also, time after time: when the group arrived back to Mondstadt after the ordeal, how did Lisa react?

Thank you for the ask! :>

I'm not entirely sure if you wanted Lisa's perspective on the scene that happened, or the one I cut, but I do love the one I cut even if it didn't serve the story, so I'm going to pull it out and POV-flip it up to the point when I realized I had to back up and do something different. >>

Lisa is still standing on the top of the Ordo steps when Barbara and Master Diluc come into view. Barbara she'd expected; Diluc she hadn't, not quite yet. She'd thought she would have to send Huffman, whom Kaeya has assured her is quite reliable when there's information he wants to distribute, to the Angel's Share to ostensibly roust out any off-duty knights who'd taken up drinking there. At which point Diluc would take off on his own initiative, with no idea of his course or what he might intend. This works out much better. "Lisa!" Barbara calls, rushing up the steps. "What happened? That cloud is from where my- where Master Jean went, isn't it?" "It does seem to be," Lisa says, patting Barbara gently on the shoulder. "We don't know for sure what's happened there just yet, but I'm trying to find out." "I take it this wasn't part of the plan." "Not at all," she tells Diluc. "This was only supposed to be a scouting mission. They must have found something very interesting indeed." She keeps her tone confident and unconcerned for Barbara's sake, hiding her own tension. The thought of Jean and Kaeya out there facing something that could have caused such tremendous chaos alone--or worse, having failed to face it, and lying injured somewhere--makes her chest ache with worry. A part of her wishes that she'd been there, though she knows there may not have been anything she could do. The best thing that she can do for them now, Lisa reminds herself, is to stay calm and in control and coordinate the emergency response. It's where her talents most lie. "Have you sent anyone to find out?" "Not yet. If it's something Jean and Kaeya can handle themselves, there's no rush, and if it's something that they can't, then there's no point in sending anything less than another captain to help them out. Noelle's gone up to Dragonspine to collect Captain Albedo, and I'm sure he'll set out as soon as she finds him." She's supposed to keep an eye out for Amber on her way, too; some advance scouting wouldn't go amiss in this situation. But she doesn't want to make Barbara any promises that she can't keep, and collecting Albedo is the higher priority. Amber is impressive for her age, but not nearly as strong, and incapable of dealing with the kind of earthquake or landslide that the evidence implies. "But...." Barbara blinks furiously, clearly fighting back tears, and shakes her head. She knows just as well as Lisa that Lisa is making the right choice for the situation, but Lisa can't blame her for her resistance. Behind her, Diluc is frowning. Lisa can see the wheels turning already, but a little nudge doesn't hurt. She deliberately gives him an arch smile. "You know, Master Diluc, I'm sure a former knight-captain would be just as capable as any of our current captains in an emergency."

...Which isn't the end of that conversation, but is the point where I realized I had to cut it, because I hit that line and realized that I wanted Diluc to have the agency of making that decision himself, but also (as I was writing it from his POV), he was coming to it too slowly to beat Lisa to the punch, because this would have been offering assistance directly to the Knights. So I cut out both problems by having Noelle summarize the situation, and making it a direct and immediate response to Barbara's desire to go herself.

As for Lisa's reaction when she returned, a combination of concern (because of the state they were both in--it didn't make it in, but I actually had it that Kaeya couldn't even take over for her for a couple of days because the Ordo has a policy re: concussions) and relief, because her friends were alive! She had to do the actual work of running the Ordo, and while both of its other top two members were out of commission to boot, so despite what she'd like to do (which was spoil them XD as well as Barbara and Noelle, who were both pretty bad off themselves after all that healing) she had to focus on doing three jobs solo for a while, which was probably even harder once news got about that Jean and Kaeya were both out of commission.

But once Kaeya recovered enough to take over, she unceremoniously took three day's leave and spent it sitting in the Cathedral infirmary drinking tea with Jean and Barbara (and keeping Noelle from working too hard by keeping her busy fetching and making tea for them), reassuring herself that everyone was all right! And sitting on the sisters just a little while she was at it. :3c

[dandelion-wings]

my brain, as I'm making breakfast this morning: You like writing Lisa as a badass. me: yes, because she is. my brain: You know, Rosaria is also badass. me, suspiciously: yyyyyes? my brain: Consider: writing them being badass TOGETHER. me: nice idea, but I don't need more WIPs, and anyway, why? my brain: Something threatened Razor. me: okay, valid, but what was it? You can't give me a WIP with nothing more than two badass ladies as the inspiration. my brain: You know that's a lie. Anyway, maybe Treasure Hoarders trying to get to Rosaria, or rogue Akademiya scholars convinced Lisa taught him arcane secrets. Treasure Hoarders hired by rogue scholars. It doesn't matter yet, you can iron out the details later. me: yeah, okay, it does sound good, but I don't need another WIP. That's not enough to sell me. We're shelving this one. my brain: No no wait LISTEN- Razor's wolf pack ALSO tries to save him. He's caged, Vision taken away, seeing his lupical being injured, certain that he's going to see his worst nightmare play out all over again and lose his wolf family a second time. And then, THIS time, the lightning and the cold and intimidating family-figure arrive soon enough to save them all.... me, grudgingly: okay now you're stealing the plot of the Collei WIP, but regardless, you've got me. We will take this to the barn to contemplate. my brain: :3c