Chapter Text
The museum was still and quiet, silence interrupted only briefly by the sound of a pair of boots landing on a high window’s ledge.
A figure looked out, surveying the gallery for late security patrols or possible additions to the alarm system with softly glowing yellow eyes, the only distinguishing feature of the crouched outline against the dark September sky.
She was on a tight schedule tonight. Her ideal speed would be “as fast as possible”, but ending up in prison would take a lot more time out of her day than double-checking for any guards or new security features. A distant part of her mind noted that she’d only done it all a couple times before, and yet she was already falling into a sort of rhythm.
She eyed the security camera sweeping back and forth across the room, its tiny red light blinking a silent warning. Pulling a small stream of energy from the well inside her she summoned her weapon, green sparks skittering across seemingly empty air followed by ripples and what seemed like a clear-edged line of mist, solidify into woven white strands. The silk lash returned to its physical existence coiled in her hand, a comforting weight against her palm.
After flicking the whip once gently to get a feel for it she made a careful strike for the camera, the end of rope wrapping tightly around it. She pulled once firmly to test the grip’s strength and then yanked hard, pulling the device from the ceiling. She released the supernatural effect of the lash and the camera unwound from the woven silk as it fell, landing on the floor with a clatter and skittering across the tile.
She turned around and leaned back through the window, hanging on to the ledge with her knees and letting her body dangle down into the room. Arms held out by her head, she kicked off from the ledge, performing an upside-down flip and landing perfectly on her feet. “That’s still so much fun,” she laughed as a second shadow appeared as a silhouette in the window.
It was small, much smaller than the first figure had been - it hopped after the first shadow, fluttering near her head and resisting its own laughter. “It’s not always fun and games, Ashe.”
“Gotta enjoy the good times while I’ve got them, Dont. Spirits’ll keep getting bigger and badder and soon I’ll be stuck in an infinite loop of school and thievery. No thanks.
"Anyway, what are we looking for this time?” Ashe looked over to the pigbat as they both stepped into a beam of moonlight, the tiny pink furball floating with its black wings.
“Schlammwasser, by Angela Wagner. You should know it when you see it.”
“Of course I should… It’s part of the new exhibit, if I remember correctly. North wing.”
As they set off through the empty museum, careful to keep one eye out for any more security cameras or alarms, Ashe tried to feel bad for the people who ran the place…. and, of course, the major felony she was committing. It was for the greater good, she knew, but the thought of serving years - or even life - in prison, should she get caught, still kept her on edge.
She also had a hard time sympathizing with the museum’s curator. The last time she’d gone to the museum (granted, to scope the place out, but still), he’d seen her leaning on a staircase railing as she was looking at a painting and proceeded to tell her off about how the railing was fragile and could collapse under her weight and that she could fall and break things… although she still wasn’t certain if he was worried about her breaking her bones or the artwork.
They passed that exact railing on their way down the stairs. Ashe stopped to deliver a swift kick to the side of it, the metal immediately denting from the sheer strength of the kick.
“Do you really have to add insult to injury, Ashe?” Dont sounded concerned as they descended to the main floor of the museum.
“Yes.” Ashe showed no remorse.
The pair turned the corner into the north wing, stepping forward into an exhibit of beautiful German artworks. A small ceramic statue built of an amalgamation of colors stood in one corner, with a majestic suit of armor opposite it. Paintings took up large areas of the wall, and the entire back of the wing was covered by a huge tapestry.
In the woven image, trees sat on a murky shoreline, half-sunken into the water. Mist and sunlight set a thin haze across the background, partly hiding some of the vegetation. Lilypads sat along the water, a few covering the reflection of the shore, scattered as they were.
Even without the dark energy she could feel coming off of the artwork, it would be clear which object in the room was possessed. A dark haze hung into the air, smelling strongly of saltwater and filling the space with unnatural humidity, and beams of sunlight shone on the occasional spot as if breaking through clouds.
Ashe cringed inwardly, thinking for a moment of all the damage the spirit’s wild growth could be doing. This humidity could start rusting the armor, it’s probably going to wreak havoc on the paintings, and who knows what this weird haze is doing…
She shook her head, forcing herself to focus on the task at hand. “Schlammwasser.” Carefully, she took a step forward into the space, waiting for something, anything, to happen. When it became clear nothing was she took a second step, then another.
As she got closer to the tapestry and the mist grew deeper Ashe found more resistance in each step forward. It felt like her entire body was moving against steadily thicker mud, straining her muscles as she approached.
The comparison to the fog grew even more apt as she started to feel energy seeping from her like body heat being pulled out by chill muck. It wasn’t spiritual or physical, it was emotional; her will to go on. She tried to fight it, but it was impossible when the very energy she needed to fight was being sucked out by the effect she was trying to combat. She just wanted to lie down. Someone else could get the spirit. Maybe if I lay down for a bit I can recover enough energy to get up and keep going. Yeah, I just need to rest…
She looked back briefly, to see how far she’d made it (just over fifteen feet, a little less than half the room), and saw that Dont fluttering haphazardly, hooves covering her ears and eyes shut tight. Worry overrode her exhaustion. “Are you alright?”
“No, I’m not alright! They won’t stop! They’re telling me I’m tired but I don’t think I am but I want to be but I don’t - can’t you hear it!?” Dont sounded halfway to tears, though Ashe heard nothing but the pigbat’s own quiet, distressed squeals echoing off the walls of the empty museum.
Ashe couldn’t stop, she knew that much even with how much she wanted to, yet she still tried to listen. She did her damnedest to ignore the resistance in the air as she slowly moved forward, trying to focus on anything besides the how tired she was. “No?” She was getting close now, and the haze became thicker around her, the world coated in white.
“The spirit’s feelings - I mean the emotion-energy - it won’t stop talking!” Dont was actually trembling, wingbeats moving slower and slower before she finally landed on the ground. It was the last Ashe saw before the fog hid everything from her sight and she could no longer hear the distressed squeals of her pigbat companion.
Dont’s words sparked a realization in Ashe, and it left her enraged. It thought it could get to her with this? This spirit had no fucking clue what the inside of her head was like every day! It was pathetic if it thought something so weak was going to stop her or that blocking her view and muffling the sounds would make her forget that Dont was hurting and scared out there. She used the anger to burn away some of the haze, the drained, cold feeling in her mind, and what it couldn’t burn away she simply ignored. She pushed the exhaustion aside, continuing to fight the resistance in the air in spite of the exhaustion instead of along with it.
It was a difficult trek - long, slow, draining, and eventually painful as her muscles started to burn with the strain, each step seeming to take a century. Still, she kept going, steadily approaching the corrupted art.
Finally the thief stood before the tapestry, the only thing still clear in her vision, like she had hit an almost physical wall. The sight of it taunted her, even though the air was too heavy to move any further. Only one thing she could do now - she held her left hand up, thinking back on what she’d done before and hoping she was doing it right.
She reached within herself to gather purifying energy, like holding a ball of air - crackling green sparks danced across her skin and lept between her fingers. The light coalesced, pushing back the haze the tapestry made. She could almost see the walls on either side, now. Hoping that it was enough, she pushed her hand through the smog, and pressed the energy into the tapestry.
The buzzing in the back of her mind grew into a scream, which then became sobs, and finally a nervous but relieved giggle. The haze flickered, as if it was being pulled out of existence, and then the tapestry was shining with sunlight that enveloped the room.
—
The next morning, Kelly Garren rolled out of bed with a groan. She slapped at her buzzing alarm clock clumsily until it stopped, then sat up. “Why am I so exhausted?” she grumbled to herself, noting that she already had a headache.
“Because you had to suddenly deal with a humid environment after being outside where it was cool and wet which probably gave you a headache, and then you had to fight through a haze of despair for an hour while working against physical resistance, and then you actually used way too much energy purifying that spirit?” A lump under an extra blanket at the foot of her bed started moving, and a tiny pink snout emerged from under it, quickly followed by a fuzzy pink body with small, black, leathery wings.
“…Right. Of course.” Kelly sighed and offered Dont a small ear-scratch. It was hard to forget how distressed the pigbat had been, and she wanted to try and make up for it even if it wasn’t her fault - though she seemed back to normal already. “Was it really an hour? I was so tired afterwards I didn’t look at the time.”
“Yeah, emotional spirits tends to slow down your perception. At least when they’re corrupted. Like making things feel way longer when you’re sad. …But you were still really cool! And you did a great job taking care of it!” The pigbat headbutted her palm affectionately. “I was kinda scared when it started getting to me but you did a great job standing up to it. Even if it was more effective against other spirits, most humans would have given up by a few minutes in. Just watching you battle through that fog was amazing!”
“If you say so.” Kelly stood up and stretched her arms above her head, rolled her neck and shoulders with some satisfying pops, then started getting dressed. “But I can’t focus on that right now. I have to go get breakfast and - ” Her phone buzzed with a text message. “And apparently help Selena decipher Aeva’s notes on her homework since she’s running late today. I’ll be back later!” With a friend in need, Kelly moved more quickly, dressing in a blur and grabbing her backpack without checking for all of her books, pulling her red puff of hair into a ponytail as she dashed out the door.
The dorm’s cafeteria was still half-empty when she got there and Kelly quickly went through the line, grabbing a bagel and an apple before heading to the small table she usually shared with her friends. Eileen and Selena were already there, Eileen with a thick paperback balanced between the table and her lap and Selena taking up half the table with her notebooks, homework, and textbook all spread in front of her. She looked pale, her face notably lighter against her dark hands as she buried her head in them. “I’m so dead.”
Kelly tapped Selena’s turquoise headband as she sat down. “No dying on my watch.”
“Kels!” Selena perked up, and shoved her notebook at her. “Look! I did the practice problems, but Aeva just wrote a bunch of gibberish next to it. Between her and the professor talking too quick, I can’t understand anything!”
“When are you going to learn that you can’t read her handwriting?” Eileen looked up from her book, blue eyes teasing. “The only one that can is Kelly, so if you need Aeva’s help you might as well get it in person.”
Selena stuck her tongue out. “I didn’t have time to meet up with her!” She tugged on a bit of her hair, relaxing a little as it bounced back in line with the rest of her wavy locks. “Whatever. Kels, what can you do? Can you work a little magic?”
Kelly smiled at the fact neither of them knew just how on point that question was. She answered as she pulled a pencil out of her bag. “Let’s see.”
—
Figuring out Selena’s homework was quick enough - she’d mixed up a couple of equations between four different problems. Aeva never made it to breakfast, but they saw their gloomy friend as they all headed to different classes afterwards. Kelly yawned her way through history, but woke up in chem as the teacher mentioned that they would be getting a new teacher’s assistant next semester; they might be more informative than the overexcited gushing of Professor Dunstan. Then an early lunch period shared with Eileen, before math with Aeva. Selena was in literature class with her, but her art class was on her own. That worked for Kelly, though, since she could just use it as a chance to sketch out some design ideas when not paying attention to the lecture or after finishing the current project early.
Done with classes at three thanks to her last block being a free period, Kelly had an hour to kill before everyone else was done at four. She headed to her room - no Dont present, which made her feel nervous but wasn’t unusual for the afternoon - and switched her backpack for a messenger bag with a few sketchbooks and her wallet in it. Then it was to the quad so she could sit down on a bench while looking at greenery for inspiration and outline some ideas.
She got lost in it quickly enough, staring around herself and blocking the area into sections before writing down how to make it better: making paths more defined, picking flowing or overhanging plants that’d make the blocking seem less obvious. Lots of clear areas so that fog wouldn’t have places to cling to- she shook her head before the memories of last night could distract her. She wanted to get stuff done, she should think about productive things, fun additions like a wishing well. Mentally editing an existing place done for her warmup, she set out on her own design for a park.
“Sundial statues? What’re those?”
The voice just over her shoulder made Kelly jump, startled out of her concentration. She slammed her sketchbook shut and whirled around, hand instinctively gripping for a weapon she couldn’t summon now - quickly hiding it by letting her hand fall against the back of the bench when she realized it was just her friends. She relaxed, thinking that no, a corrupted spirit couldn’t possibly be here to mess with her, nor would it introduce itself with anything other than an attack. “You guys should know not to sneak up on me!”
The three of them shrugged, and Aeva stepped around to sit next to her, tapping at the sketchbook with a black nail. “We wanted to see what you’re always so earnestly working on. Gotta make sure I’m the only one planning a rebellion and anarchy.”
“Like you’d ever seriously destroy everything,” Kelly answered. “And it’s for a secretproject!” She was so used to rushing over talking about her work that she blended the phrase into one word.
“Ooooh, ‘secretproject’?” Eileen sat on her other side, already wearing her cream-and-red jacket that clashed with their green uniforms but that she never left campus without. “Tell us, we already saw some details!”
“We know it’s probably a landscaping thing,” Selena pointed out, leaning on the back of the bench. She was tall enough that it seemed a natural spot for her, standing over them all. “So just share already, before Eileen starts teasing you too much.”
Kelly huffed out a sigh. They both did have a point. So she opened her sketchbook up again, the page she was using handily bookmarked by her pencil. “You know how the city’s planning that new community center building? They’re putting a park around it, and running a contest for designs on the layout of everything. I want to enter.” She pointed at her centerpiece, the sundial statues. “These’d be a set of twelve statues, fitting a theme that could be set by the city council or whoever. Maybe alongside the Melinda Museum?” She had to hold back a chuckle at mentioning that place, considering last night. “It could be abstract, or maybe something simple like historic citizens of the city, our founders or something. Either way, you put them all surrounding a pillar- again, something fitting the theme, but it could be anything so long as it’s tall and simple - and it acts as a giant sundial, but it’s not obvious because there’s dozens of feet in between each point.”
“That’s actually really cool!” Aeva said, a rare smile crossing her normally dour face. “Why not share this before?”
Kelly’s cheeks tinged red, and Eileen chuckled. “Because she doesn’t like hearing praise. Remember, she tends to the background, not the spotlight.”
Selena lightly knocked both of the other two girls on the head. “Don’t tease! It’s really cool, Kels, and we hope you keep us in on this. I at least wanna hear more about it.”
“Thanks,” Kelly mumbled. She noticed something out of the corner of her eye as Selena switched the conversation to Aeva’s lack of penmanship and Aeva retorted about the dark depths not being understood. She glanced towards the trees, and saw a familiar pigbat barely hidden by foliage as she tried to get her attention. Kelly made a subtle wave at Dont, something that could be mistaken for a twitch or trying to stretch her fingers out after holding a pencil for close to an hour if her friends saw it. Then she quickly extricated herself from the conversation, citing a headache and homework so she could head back to her room.
—
“I’m missing dinner for this, you know. Eileen was gonna treat us all - well, technically her dad was, but still.”
Dont shrugged with her wings. “Sorry, but spirits don’t wait long. I could tell you where to find some really good wild mushrooms?”
Kelly rolled her eyes. At least she’d been able to use the few hours before sunset to get her homework done - she just wished she didn’t have to ditch her friends. “I’ll just grab some fast food on my way back or something.”
Dont didn’t seem put off by the decline. Rather, she was more focused on the sky outside. “It’s almost sunset. The spirit’s probably gonna activate soon. You ready?”
Kelly nodded and stood up. “As much as I can be.”
With one hand, she removed the pin from her red hair - a tiny, distorted clover, purple and gold. The words were strange, feeling even stranger when they left her lips, but she gripped the pin gently in both hands and said them, letting the power flow through her.
“Pretty Magical Spirit Thief Aesling!”
There was a spark, then a flame, as warmth spread through her body… like coming in to a heated house after being out in the snow. She couldn’t see what was going on, but she could feel it - her hair bursting out from its tie, her school uniform fading away and replaced by new, more comfortable clothing. Her chest tightened, slightly, before being covered by a shirt and a jacket, then the addition of her bracers, gloves, pants, and boots.
Fire lit behind her eyes as she opened them, cold momentarily surrounding her neck and upper arms. The first thing she saw were streaks of violet light that wrapped around her jacket, coming to a sparkling halt as her belt appeared with them, the clover pin reforming onto her sash.
And, as Dont watched her, eyes open in amazement and quietly clapping her hooves together (though she’d seen the transformation before), Ashe gave into the impulse and struck a pose.
“Alright, then, let’s go!” The pigbat leapt headfirst out the open window. Ashe rolled her eyes, but followed, disappearing into the slowly growing shadows of dusk as she followed her friend.