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Aj stood in the middle of the great hall, surrounded on all sides by familiar, yet painfully expressive faces. Most of her academy mates wore their heart on their sleeves, and by Mark; Aj wanted nothing more than to rip and claw right through them.
She paced back and forth profusely, looking at both the entrance to the hall, and the faces of her peers.
To most of the students, Aj appeared to be scanning the exits, perhaps planning a way to escape. She glanced upon the rest of the group as a way to predict their next moves.
Although to one person, they knew this was all a facade. They saw right through Aj’s terrifyingly accurate expression. They saw the way she was slightly hunched over, brow furrowed. They noticed the twitch of her eye as she raked upon particular faces in the group.
Most notably, they saw the slight upturn of the left side of her lip before it disappeared. This only appeared when Aj was planning something particularly dramatic and potentially definitely dangerous.
Aj looked less like a cornered dog, but more like a wolf feigning an injury. This was the face of a woman ready to attack as soon as someone got too close.
Desperate to save not just everyone else, but Aj herself, Megii began to open her mouth. Yet it was quickly shut as a grotesque sort of sound began emanating throughout the great hall. The students began to look around wildly while others clamped their hands over their ears.
Megii looked towards Aj only to find her hunched over, nearly still. The only movement came from the slight shaking of her body. Megii’s eyebrows furrowed as they took one step toward Aj. At the slight crunch of her footstep, Aj turned around wildly, revealing her slightly ajar lips. It dawned on Megii that the sound was coming from Aj herself, a sound nothing short of a birds cackle.
Megii, although not without slight fear, stayed rooted in place. They got only a glimpse of Aj’s wild eyes before she turned right back around and began speaking.
“You know I thought uncovering people’s secrets was going to be a lot more interesting than this. I’ll tell you that much, but it’s just exhausting.”
She turned and started pointedly at a few select people for a couple of seconds. She sighed dramatically, dragging her hand down her face hard enough to temporarily drag her scar along with it. Aj groaned as she shoved her hands behind her back and began to pace again.
“It’s all unrequited love.” She spared a quick glimpse and a smirk at one tree.
“It’s self sacrificial lambs that offer themselves up to the wolves, still in sheep’s clothing.”
At this she flicks her hair back and mimes ringing bells, all while giving her audience a halfhearted hop.
“It’s nothing but a book given by someone who knows your pain all too well. A book that unravels someone’s best kept secret,” Aj’s somewhat normal speech turns into a shout, “SOMEONE’S BEST KEPT LIE.”
Aj takes a deep breath and runs her hands through her now tousled hair, temporarily displacing her goggles. She stands up as straight as her posture allows, before settling back down into a relaxed state.
She smirks at the entrance to the door, her look all but daring something to enter, or rather someone.
“Dri- Open Book,” she says slowly, carefully enunciating every syllable of that false nickname, “kept something from me. A lie in fact, even though she told me over and over no such thing existed.”
At these last few words, the room seemed to grow colder, near ice-like. Aj heard someone sharply inhale while most everyone else looked confused. However, she noticed the turmoil between a certain someone’s eyes. Aj craned her neck almost imperceptibly, and saw pure turmoil in those eyes.
Aj began chucking, soon enough it grew into a strangled laugh echoing through the halls. The lights seemed to flicker, and the air had grown stale, almost dead.
“Of course you knew, why am I not surprised? There’s a reason I called you Smart One, isn’t there?”
Aj now perched in front of Megii, although several paces in front of her. Megii took a stance one could only describe as cautious, with her feet apart and shoulders squared. If you look hard enough, you could see the slight tremor in her body, and the minute flexing of their hands.
“Isn’t that so ironic? You told me over and over not to keep secrets from her. What is it that you said?” Aj crossed her arms over her heart and declared in a higher pitched voice, “If you won’t tell her Aj, then I will.”
Megii went to speak but they couldn’t get a word in before Aj began again.
“Well Smart One riddle me this. Did you tell her the same thing? Did you bombard her with the same advice, the same threat, the way you did me?”
Megii was a decent space away, yet close enough to see the widening of Aj’s eyes. Her pupils were extremely blown out, near manic, as she all too well resembled the dead look in a corvid’s gaze.
At some point in the altercation, Aj’s hair stuck out in all directions, wild and unruly. Her posture became rigid and the tips of her fingers turned sharp as talons. It was obvious that someone as unique as the decay mage would have a relation to crows as well.
Aj lazily raised a claw toward Megii, as realization
flashed in her grave-like eyes. Her mouth stretched into this wide smirk, the corners of her lips stretching almost painfully. For one last time, Aj ran her left hand down her face, possibly forgetting her new fingers turned talons. Her claws ran down her cheeks as she came away with a cut to rival the old scar.
She looked at Megii unflinching, even as blood dripped from her talons onto the hall carpet. Megii’s eyes, not for the first time today, widened at Aj’s display of, whatever this was.
“I just realized Smart One, Megii, if I may..”
Hearing their ‘name’ leave Aj’s mouth sounded less of a statement. It took on the sound of someone straining to say a word, as if it physically irked them to do so.
“It’s funny, considering that Open Book kept a, royally,” Aj let out a mirthless chuckle, “big secret. You know, who’s to put a name to this problem?”
Megii, as though she already knew where this was heading quickly spoke out, “Aj don’t-“
She was quickly hushed by the glare of a thousand murders. The crime or the birds? She couldn’t distinguish them apart anymore.
Aj cracked her knuckles as the kept direct eye contact with the person directly in front of her. She took a step closer keeping her hands, and sharp talons to her side. Megii sharply took a step back, shrinking and holding eye contact, albeit somewhat shakily.
Anyone who was around them could easily sense the tension between these two. Everyone who left the hall alive that day could only describe the scene before them as ‘predator vs prey’.
“I’m a sucker for irony Smart One, but this is almost too much. It’s so obvious that you would keep Open Book’s true nature, true name from me.”
Aj’s form cast a dark shadow across Megii’s face, and with it came the illusion that she was much taller than them. Despite the dark outline on Aj’s own face, they saw nothing but her eyes, now a stark black.
“Of course, you’re hiding a pretty secret of your own, aren’t you? After all, what’s in a name?”
Aj, quick enough to register as a flash of darkness, drew her hand forward. A singular claw, one marred with blood, landed on the underside of Megii’s chin, making them match their gaze to Aj’s own. She barely registered Flick perching on her shoulder and leveling her a glare of her own.
Aj pulled her claw toward herself, drawing Megii even closer than before. She looked at them with a glint in her eye, a predator finally ensnaring its meal. She smirked before leaning closer, her wild breaths at Megii’s ear. Aj smirked before drawling,
“Isn’t that right….
Magpie?”