------------- College Days - Morrigan

The light hurt her eyes. It was always too bright here, even in the winter time. This high up, the sun glared across white snow and sparkled through a cold blue sky in Delneuve. In Triskein it cut almost straight down through that same sapphire blue sky. Only occasionally did the clouds venture high enough to block that sun, with Syvasgaard and Kar’Dhaer sitting two miles above sea level. Being Arrallon, the tree line was another mile and a half up. When clouds did climb this high, they rampaged mercilessly. But even then, she wouldn’t be out to enjoy the darkness. She didn’t get out that much.

The night was her domain, the dimness and the shadows, but more than that, the lights and sounds of night. Mostly, she liked the lights and sounds of a place like The Midnight Sun, the play house, music emporium and all round party center of the town of Syvasgaard. She liked the smell of liquor and the sting of smoke in her nose, the hot, sweaty bodies gyrating on the dance floor, and slower, hotter dances taking place elsewhere. And she liked the noise, the loud noise, the furious noise, the banging, twanging, wall shaking noise. She’d come to be a player in the band. She had skill, had talent, and it was no time at all until she was playing guitar and singing backup vocals for Malikai Grayves himself.

But even that got boring. When Kar’Dhaer opened up, she thought about it. Then she went out and got smashed and thought about it some more. On a foggy Jovosie morning, with church bells blaring far too loudly in her throbbing head, and a guy passed out in her small room she didn’t quite recognize or remember, she decided to do it. The next day she walked the five miles over to Kar’Dhaer and put in her application. A week later she was shocked to receive a package with her acceptance and instructions for placement tests. She had to wonder whether the boss had something to do with this,… story had it he used to travel with the Headmistress of Kar’Dhaer. Had he pulled a few strings? Maybe. Maybe not.

Morrigan Deguerre was not without her qualities. Sure she was often mistaken for a shadowmaster or necromancer wannabe,… that is, until somebody heard her sing. Yes, she was wild and undisciplined, but brilliant and charming. She could wheedle out of most of the problems she got herself into. Her father had been a Sonntaglian sailor, her mother a Hobmarz prostitute. Home was a best forgotten nightmare. This was home now, wherever she could find solace in the night, wherever she could sing her songs, wherever she could get a drink and a smoke. Fortunately, this Kar’Dhaer Academy didn’t discriminate against Bards,… and they had a collection of catacombs under the castle where a girl could go to get some alone time,… and the acoustics down there were awesome. There was no telling what the stuffy professors and self absorbed regents might be able to teach her about sound waves and magic that she might put to good use.

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