Jan. 22nd, 2010

[identity profile] belak-krin.livejournal.com
He’s a miserable bastard, Lapet thought as continued weaving the incantation, his mouth full of cheap smoke and Atlantean sounds.

Beneath his fingers, the scent of libraries sprang forth as leather, paper and glue became decades older than they had been when he bought them. Lapet gave the book an experimental leaf and the pages rustled pleasingly. He put the book down with the others; hundreds of blank pages ready to be filled with arcane secrets and private thoughts, each one carefully laced with death to give them an authentic ‘arcane scholar’ feel.

Lapet raised a bottle to his lips and drank deeply. He’d known Ninshubar for nearly 8 years now and could remember seeing him smile about twice. Lapet had considered on several occasions that perhaps it was just that he irritated the older Mage and that laughter and jokes sprang from Ninshubar’s lips all the time when Lapet wasn’t there. Part of him hoped that was true, but he doubted it.

The man was always so damned serious; as dry as the books he spent his life reading through. For every new Rote and idea that Lapet had been thrilled by, Ninshubar had looked dourly down and explained that ‘magic was not a toy’ or Lapet should be ‘more respectful of those who had passed’. It seemed that whenever Lapet saw freedom, Ninshubar saw responsibility. When Lapet was pleased at what he could do, Ninshubar was concerned about what he might do.

With a word, a shambling corpse wearing a Santa hat brought forth small strips of cellotape for Lapet’s use. His hands went back to work again.

Sometimes it seemed like Ninshubar’s life had already died before his body or mind had a chance to. At one point Lapet had decided that perhaps the older Mage might enjoy some female company and reasoning that he knew plenty of girls who liked the mysterious, intelligent type had taken Ninshubar to a club. When the (in hind sight inevitable) rejections started, Lapet felt like he had let the man down somehow and covered himself by mocking the Mage’s pulling power. At that point he had decided that he should probably leave the man to his books since they at least seemed to give him some kind of pleasure.

Despite being as different as two Necromancers could probably be without actually siding with the Seers, Lapet liked Ninshubar, or at least he respected him. He was powerful and knowledgeable and always seemed to have something smart to say when all Lapet could usually manage was to make something work, whether it was a good idea or not. Of course Ninshubar would usually let him know in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t a good idea, without acknowledging the skill required to shut down an entire network by increasing the conductivity of a few resisters by as little as 3 volts.

He was a nagging pain in the arse, Lapet concluded as he put a bow around the carefully wrapped books, but it was Christmas and the man deserved something nice. As much as he hated to admit it to himself, Lapet just wanted Ninshubar to be proud of him.

Not that I’ll ever give the bastard the satisfaction of knowing, he thought grimly and began carefully and deliberately severing the magical threads that connected him to the carefully prepared gift.

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