One morning not unlike most other mornings before it, Waver Velvet was stuffing his stack of freshly-scribbled notes into his bag when he realised that they too would end up in the growing piles of paper in the back of his closet, and that they would never amount to anything, and that by extension he would never achieve a single worthwhile thing and would in all probability forever remain an irremediable waste of life.
This thought gave him pause for all of two seconds, as it usually did, after which he resumed gathering his belongings unhurriedly, letting the majority of the students awkwardly shuffle out of the aisles and down the stairs without him. It was during that wait that he had his second epiphany, which rooted him to the spot even after the lecture hall had cleared of even the most sluggish layabouts.
It was easy to entertain a spot of nihilism, a touch of sheer dread that urged him onward and away, and significantly less to consider why this self-flagellation was a frequent occurrence at all. In the same way that he considered his notes – notes from his thoughts, from his lectures, from his thoughts on his lectures – an attestation of a mind that considered every thought that it produced valuable and yet couldn't find a real use for any of them, he was taking the lesser punishment to his ego to spare himself the hard-hitting questions. Like, for example, what the hell he was trying to prove in the first place.
His situation was entirely his fault, and the problem with admitting it was that it would take a massive change – a fundamental one, in the strict sense of the word – to escape it. Simply put, his approach was off from the start and it had only become more skewed with time. He was the mirror image of the student who was told from an early age that he was special, preternaturally gifted with superior intellect, whose illusion of superiority encountered resistance from reality far too late for him to have developed a practical understanding of what it means to put in the effort; in Waver's case, he thought himself a genius first and then demanded for the world to vindicate his belief. If it didn't, he would force it to.
And that was where he'd been for the past five years. Banging his head against the walls of the institution until they gave way and granted him passage. Into what exactly he didn't have a clear idea; all he saw were locked doors he was determined to break through.
For what purpose? Obviously, because turning back would mean he was wrong from the start, about everything, irredeemably, and he would have to scuttle his studies and start over as yet another no-name magus scrabbling for a place in the lowermost rungs of the Clock Tower rather than a genius who would turn the system on its head. When it came down to it, he would've rather burned out trying to prove the world wrong than accept being told that he shouldn't even try.
More importantly, he wouldn't give those people the satisfaction by giving up.
That thought, conclusive enough, snapped Waver out of his stupor. He walked down the steps to the exit already negotiating the topic of his missed breakfast and whether he could make up for it with a trip to Covent Garden before his lab. As a result he narrowly avoided colliding with the man coming through and found himself sputtering out an apology by habit even though he wasn't the one all but sprinting into the hall.
Ignoring the near-accident completely, the man – definitely not a student if his getup was any indication, which made Waver's deference a good precaution – looked frantically around the empty hall, calling out “Professor!” to his quarry as if he was expecting someone to crawl out from under the stands in response. Waver pondered for the briefest moment whether he should belabour the obvious even more by pointing out that the professor was not, in fact, here, before he turned to leave. The man was having none of that, naturally.
“Wait! You're Waver Velvet, right? Professor Archibald's eternal student?”
The first part stopped Waver in his tracks, his traitorous brain already forming the answer. The second part left him with his mouth hanging open, an adequate response not quite coming together while he suppressed his sudden urge to explode. When it did – a strained, pointedly inflected admission that he was indeed Waver, comma, Velvet, full stop – the man he'd already mentally christened “vacuous prick” seemed awash with relief of the kind Waver was familiar with – that of finding someone to safely offload a bothersome task on to.
That didn't mean he refused. No, he stood there and listened to how normally no one would be trusted with this sort of thing, took what was given to him for being trustworthy, got clapped on the shoulder and watched the man go before his conscious mind caught up with the situation, but hey, at least he scored an imaginary jibe. Now he only had to live off that high until dinner, seeing as he'd just given up lunch to personally deliver his Lordly Highness Kayneth bloody Archibald's shitey mail.
God, he was such a fuckup. Would anything ever go his way?
Waver Velvet sighed the sigh of a martyr and turned the envelope in his hand around.
The glint of silver script and heraldry struck his eyes like an ore vein in rock. His stomach's flips at the sight had nothing to do with hunger, and he certainly didn't rush off to find a kettle just to brew tea.
“Tell me, Waver. Are you so far gone in your rebellion against propriety that you refuse to observe office hours?”
If there was something in Kayneth Archibald that Waver could grudgingly admire, it was the man's ability to effortlessly rebuke the people around him, his blend of superiority and dismissal conveyed without allowing the slightest insinuation that he was in any way affected. Perhaps he had developed this bizarre appreciation because he'd been the recipient of the professor's derision more than any other student by far, but by the same token he'd also built up a resistance to it that was unprecedented for his lowly station. And perhaps the Lord put up with it because it amused him when his punch bag put up a fight.
As it was, Waver still hadn't graduated from the classroom, and Kayneth still hadn't kicked him out. It was thought by third parties that the other's surrender was the only acceptable outcome.
“No sir. But I think it would be less disruptive if I did, sir.”
Kayneth's smirk from behind his desk was clearly asking “and whose fault is that?”. Waver, whose fault it definitely was for picking a fight with the Peregrine heir in the queue for Kayneth's office, watched his professor sip his tea in silence. Eventually, Kayneth shook his head in mock disbelief – another familiar gesture of his – and put down his cup and saucer with deliberation; the very image of a kindly principal about to scold a recalcitrant yet endearing student if one was severely short of sight.
“Waver, Waver, Waver,” came the first round of tut-tuts. “How long has it been now, four years, five? I may have once believed that you are much more suited for a simple life but you have turned me around on this, yes you have!” He allowed a pause, and was undeterred when Waver didn't rise to it, his smile thinning. “Why, I think you have learned a great deal through sheer stubbornness.”
“Thank you professor. You've been a true inspiration.”
That, while thoroughly sarcastic, was completely true. Waver Velvet's obstinacy and egotism would have led him to spectacular blunders before long, and so it could be said that finding his match in those qualities under the tutelage of Kayneth Archibald had helped Waver channel his grievances into a productive purpose. The evisceration of his research paper by the Lord was the starting point for the student's manic attempts to force his teacher and the world in general to acknowledge his prowess, writing critique after critique on any established theory he could get his hands on, peaking with the publication of a critical response to the original paper outlining the research on the Volumen Hydrargyrum, where Waver identified design oversights and proposed a number of improvements to Kayneth Archibald's supreme mystic code in what was universally regarded as a pretty ballsy, if stupid, move. That he wasn't scalped for it spoke volumes about the validity of the claims, monumentally petty as their motivation was.
It went without saying, however, that acknowledging Waver's progress in a certain field only encouraged Kayneth to emphasise his deficiencies in others, perpetuating the cycle of scorn and resentment. Such was life in the Lord El-Melloi's classroom. Case in point:
“Your ability to quibble about the magecraft of those more successful than you is, while noteworthy, utterly crass, and in no way does it make up for the woeful state of your own. It is nothing to be proud of, I assure you.”
“I am of the same mind. One can't let quibbles get in the way of personal growth.”
“What are you growing into, Waver? A permanent fixture in my classroom?”
Tempting as it was to answer in kind Waver hadn't come to start a pissing match. Kayneth, realising this display of passivity was unlike his student, must've drawn his own conclusion, and the look that dawned on his face was one of detached pity – the kind that had been Waver's constant and most hated companion in his earlier years. When Kayneth started speaking, slowly and evenly, the regret of someone who had to break the hard truth almost rang true, if only Waver didn't know firsthand what the man really thought of his inferiors.
“I only want the best for my students, and the life of a magus is not for everyone, sadly. But even so, I recognise that you have exceeded my expectations in specific areas. Not by much, and they weren't a high bar by any means, but all the same.”
He thinks I'm quitting, Waver realised. This Pontius Pilate with the emphasis on “ponce” was washing his hands of him with the first and last pat on the back, and even that was backhanded. If he had any reservations about his plan, he didn't care to remember them now.
Waver kept his cool even as the thought of how he'd shut the prattling prick up made him giddy. In fact he clamped down on his emotions so hard that spontaneous reactions proved beyond him when his brain combined the words “was”, “thinking”, “about”, “making”, “you”, “a”, “teaching”, and “assistant” into an intelligible sentence, parsed its meaning, and condensed his understanding of it into an inarticulate choking sound. Professor Archibald, drawing his own interpretation, shook his head again, this time ruefully.
“It seems to me that since critiquing the works of others is all you're good at, you could put that to good use grading papers. I think your future in the Clock Tower lies in that direction, and I would be willing to put in a word about that with your new professor.”
Having said his piece in memory of his oldest student's academic prospects, Kayneth returned his attention to his tea, waiting to reap the gratitude due from his most troublesome ex-student. Instead, he received an envelope tossed contemptuously onto his desk.
The cup, frozen mid-journey, was put back down. A gloved hand picked up the envelope and held it for a long moment without opening it. It was then, and only then, that Waver's composure broke, and the volatile mixture of anger, humiliation, vindictiveness, and the viciousness of the weak turning the tables against the strong reacted together to form, in one short question, an encapsulation of Waver Velvet's feelings towards his longtime tormentor, nemesis, and gatekeeper to the world of magic that he deserved more than anyone else.
“Let's talk about your future, Lord El-Melloi.”
In that moment he felt like a god. The visceral satisfaction at Kayneth's astonishment, the sheer dumbfoundedness which suited his face better than any sneer, was quite literally the best he'd ever felt in his entire life.
And then he was kicked out.
Kayneth didn't summon him back that day. It made sense, Waver reckoned. It wasn't easy, facing reality for the first time. He spent the following morning like any other, eating his breakfast with gusto and making a note to definitely treat himself to a nice lunch after the day's first lecture. The spring in his step must have baffled the people who knew him by reputation, but Waver was past caring about any of them. He had faced unimaginable hardships and pulled through, he had seized destiny by the throat, and what did these brats know about any of that? He could pick apart their narrow minds, dance circles around their precious mysteries. Once he'd made his way into their ivory tower there would be no more illusions about that fact.
Waver's cheer lasted until shortly after the break, frayed by a myriad small factors until it gave way to an anxiety verging on paranoia, the elation glazing over his thoughts dimming enough for the implications of his actions to become visible once more. With each creak of a stand and movement in the corner of his eye seeming to foster sinister intent, he conceded to his fears and fled from the hall all the way to his dorm like a hounded man jumping at shadows.
It wasn't illogical, he reasoned, slumped against the locked door. Just a remote possibility. He knew whose business he was getting into. He had just been a bit unsure of what it entailed.
He'd been thinking about the side of the issue that was familiar to him and concluded that Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald was not so foolish as to not think the situation through and understand that dialogue was the logical option. With his thoughts focused on the man he'd somehow failed to consider, or rather didn't think the idea through, that pilfering and opening a sensitive letter was a breach of confidentiality for the sender as well. When he realised that the information he had come across was a tool as much as a liability, rendering him a target to something so nebulous and distant from his everyday life that his imagination could scarcely come up with adequately terrifying scenarios, his confidence about his surefire extortion scheme plummeted like a balloon robbed of all its hot air.
He sat in the dark and lamented his choices until his roommate returned in the afternoon, giving him a mighty scare while unlocking the door, and informed Waver that Professor Archibald had asked for him in his office “forthwith”, emphasis his, because who even says that? Waver thanked him, cobbled together the pieces of his spine, and marched to Kayneth's office to meet destiny with dignity.
With how he'd played up the whole affair in his mind to the level of a grand conspiracy, reaching the Lord's door without incident felt almost disappointing. After some inexplicable deliberation with his hand on the handle over whether he should knock on the door or not, the voice calling him inside took the choice out of his hands.
Professor Archibald met him in the same place as yesterday, his hands held steepled between inscrutable eyes. Waver, ever the schoolboy, mentally rehearsed his lines while he waited for Kayneth to speak first; which he did, in a voice stripped of its habitual derision.
“I will give you yet another chance to prove your ignorance,” he said. For once it didn't feel like an insult but a fact, offered as a lifeline. The forget-and-forgive option, in truth the same one repeatedly forced on Waver over the years: to give up and leave, with stakes greater than his pride now on the line. Kayneth was telling him the same thing that he'd been telling himself for most of the day: that he was in over his head and should walk away. An hour ago he couldn't have answered for sure. Now there was no doubt in his mind.
No hand-wringing, no slouching, no stuttering. He looked Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald in the eye and gave him his answer.
“I've arranged for the biggest rumourmongers in the student body to get a tip if I—if anything happens to me. So that's a no, sir.”
Alright, just a little bit of stuttering, and maybe his arrangement wasn't actually as airtight as he was implying, but the conviction behind his words was solid. Kayneth looked struck by his answer, and Waver felt a flutter of hope at that.
The next moment, his look turned ponderous, and it was somehow worse than if he'd been furious instead.
“You....dare to threaten me?” Kayneth asked evenly, the conversational tone making Waver's hair rise and the words stick to his tongue.
“I-I see no other way to fight back against corruption and an unjust system.”
“Corruption,” he repeated slowly, as though sampling the word. “And an unjust system.”
Then with a shrug of his shoulders, Kayneth's demeanour shed its rigidness all at once, easing into his chair. The return of the sardonic professor was a relief than Waver would never admit.
“I blame myself for this, Waver, I really do. I did not curb your juvenile fantasies before they gave rise to criminal tendencies.“
“It doesn't matter, professor.” And it really didn't; not only because Waver wasn't going to sit through another lecture on his shortcomings, but because he couldn't think of why he'd ever tried so hard to earn Kayneth's approval when he knew it was impossible to begin with. “Let's discuss the matter at hand.”
“Very well. I will attempt to relate to you the depths of your stupidity, beginning with the fundamental flaws in your reasoning.”
Alas, the negotiations turned out to be a lecture after all.
The situation could be broadly summarised in the following way:
Lord Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald, the child-genius of a prestigious family, had followed his destined path of success by becoming a premier researcher and a first-class lecturer in multiple departments, forging political ties with Lord Eulyphis through engagement to his daughter, and even receiving the honour of the El-Melloi title from the highest authorities of the Clock Tower. It was, also, a mere matter of time before he would formally become the Head of Mineralogy, supposedly timed to coincide with his marriage ceremony - a moment of ultimate triumph.
Young, brilliant, and powerful - all in all, things were going pretty well for him. The star of Kayneth Archibald was still rising, and it was thought by some that he had the potential to one day become the leader of the Clock Tower itself.
That piece of hubris might have been why the letter found its way to him, though the intent would never be known for sure. After all, the Clock Tower had many mechanisms in place to reward excellence with absolute control.
There already existed a supreme magus of the modern era. A prodigy who might've one day united the institution under his leadership was not needed when the King ruled them all with an iron fist. Or as it had been for the past year, the Queen.
Magi fundamentally strove to attain a path to the Root, but this was a pilgrimage fraught with perils which only increased the closer they got to their goal. Those who broke apart from the roads most traveled, the innovators carving their own paths ahead of the pack, were marked, captured, and sealed so that their genius would never be lost from the world. Those who had become exemplars of their craft, the Lords, department Heads, and lecturers, were tasked with leading the pilgrims down the paths of knowledge for the benefit of all who would undertake the pilgrimage in the future.
The reward for the former was a denial of nothing but their singular goal. The reward for the latter was a denial of all but their singular duty.
Kayneth Archibald, the rising star of the Clock Tower, had, at the peak of his powers, been called to set aside his blessed life for service in the Queen's handpicked unit of elites among elites, the Crown Battalion. That was the answer that Waver Velvet had arrived at. It was no coincidence that the fifty magi comprising the unit were said to be fit to lead a department. Once they put on the mask, their identities ceased to matter. Service in the Choir – to the Barthomeloi – was service for life.
Understandably, he wouldn't be all that keen on the prospect. Waver, having grasped the predicament his teacher was in when he intercepted the letter of invitation and spied on its contents – a call for Lord El-Melloi to “fulfil the obligation” of the name he had been granted, and instructions to put his affairs in order, reading more like a death sentence than a congratulatory message – assumed that he would try to worm his way out of it under tables and behind closed doors, and hatched a scheme where he could hold the information that Kayneth would want to keep quiet about over his head in a last-ditch attempt to graduate from the tutelage of a man determined to bounce him out of the world of magecraft altogether.
The fundamental problem with Waver's idea of blackmail, Kayneth explained, was assuming that making public the information about his “promotion” was a devastating prospect that he would want to avoid at all costs. This was because Waver, as an outsider who had made no effort to understand the institution and culture he was part of, had no idea what names like “Barthomeloi” and “Archibald” actually meant, the kind of power they commanded, and the way their gravity shifted the political landscape around them. Powerful people were throwing their support behind Kayneth on a level that dormroom gossip could never reach. Waver pointed out that it would still be much preferable for Kayneth to deal with the situation while making sure the knowledge didn't reach, let's say Lord Eulyphis, to which Kayneth replied that he wasn't in the habit of accepting answers which were correct for the wrong reasons.
By the end of it Waver felt his position was, while less secure, still negotiable, and put forth his demand of a top-ranked graduation from Kayneth's classroom in return for his silence. This finally earned him a sneer, but not for the reason he was expecting.
“I've known you to be pathetic in many ways but never for lack of trying. What happened to proving me wrong, Waver?”
The rebuke hit close to home. For all that he felt justified, even though he knew that he had exhausted all legitimate means to obtain what he thoroughly deserved, Waver's pride still chafed at the idea of extorting someone – even Professor Archibald – to receive it.
“I can prove many things wrong, sir, but your opinion doesn't seem to be one of them.”
“Indeed. Yet I must say you managed it, in the end. I did not expect you to have the guts to do something like this.”
Resting a hand on his temple, Kayneth tapped out a rhythm in contemplation for a few seconds.
“However.” The tapping ceased, and he leaned forward in his chair. “I have no intention of compromising my record as a lecturer by making a mockery of regulations. If you want to graduate from my class, mister Velvet, you will have to earn it.”
“W-What are you talking about? What do you—that's what I've been—you--!“
It was too much for Waver to bear. Having his five years of toil and hardship brushed aside had reduced him to sputtering, his feelings impossible to articulate. But before he descended to wordless rage, Kayneth placed a large piece of paper – no, parchment, it seemed – on the desk before him, and his indignation ground to a halt.
Cursive letters flowed in an elegant script, spelling out words that Waver had trouble believing even as he read them. When he looked up from the text, his face held an incredulity bordering on trepidation.
“This is a joke, right?”
Kayneth spared exactly two shakes of his head.
“It is, you will find, deadly serious.”
“No way. I refuse.”
“Of course, you can do that. But I should inform you that the mercury you absorbed through your skin when you touched the door handle will kill you shortly after you leave this office. Unless I tell it not to, that is.”
Kayneth allowed himself a smile as his ashen-faced student all but collapsed onto his carpet. Then he procured a quill and a knife from a drawer of his desk and placed them next to the scroll.
“Sign with blood above the line, Waver. It will be a challenge, but I shall make a passable apprentice out of you.”
TBC R&R PLZ |