The Expanse

1: Blackwatch Spire

Across the mountains surrounding Arthur's Vale, anyone could see the distant needles that erected from the otherwise plain ridge line. Ancient ruins from an old era lost to time— and only fragments of their memory were preserved at Oswyre Academy, the most prestigious arcane college on the continent.

Blackwatch Spire, however, was a different case entirely. The college held many books detailing the old warlock keep high in the mountains of the vale. It was detailed in these very books, the horrors in occult magic that took place at the old stone structure. A place of old, forgotten, knowledge.

Lucara Ludvic knew these books well. She knew all books well, but it served as a cautious reminder to review them as her wagon climbed the steep trail towards Blackwatch Spire.

The wagons rumbling shook the circular wooden frame of her glasses down her nose, forcing her to remove them entirely. Her present company and the carts traveling behind hers had spent several days on the road after exiting the city limits of Arnehal. Though the academy was inside the walls of Arnehal and sheltered her from the typhoons, Lucara hated the long rainy seasons of the Vale.

Wind tore through the cart's canopy, causing Lucara to shiver and pull the wool blanket tighter to her and as a reaction the person sharing the blanket with her drew closer. The halfling girl at her side with short brown hair tied in a neat bun buried deeper into the blanket.

Lucara smiled, she adored when her dormmate got like this. "Portia, we've nearly arrived." She said, nudging the halfling girl.

Portia shot up, her standing height only eye level with Lucara's sitting posture, and she rushed to the head of the cart. She flipped open the flap, inviting the brunt of the storm to nearly blow her off her feet.

"My gods.." Portia gasped.

Lightning cracked across the sky as Blackwatch Spire came into view.

Though darkened by the overcast, to Lucara, the obsidian stone slabs seemed to absorb even the lightning's radiance. Clouds swirled above the spire's peak, broken window shudders rattled in the wind and rebeled against their hinges. The mud thickened in the foreground of the spire, waterfalls of runoff seemed to repel the cart as the horses trudged through it onward at the commands of the carriage driver, she could hear the protests of the horses, the creatures were loyal but not without fear.

An opaque white crystal hanging from the ceiling of the cart illuminated, an a voice radiated through it.

"Ms.Lucara Ludvic, this is your proctor speaking, when the carts have stopped— please have Portia and Collum clear a room for the wounded, it's paramount that we tend to them before their condition deteriorates past our expertise." His voice hums through the crystal.

"It will be done Proctor Ackridge." She speaks to it, hoping the shard in his cart would recieve her message.

Portia was tempered and hated being ordered around by him, which was why he cleverly appointed Lucara as team leader. Portia would assist her friend without question while Lucara tended to her duties.

When the carts parked, Portia abandoned her luggage as she dragged Collum, the half-elf, towards the entrance though Lucara assumed he didn't protest physical contact with Portia. Such was their relationship.

Lucara gathered her things, and took a final look at the tarp in the center of the cart, the remains of a classmate laid under it. Such were the risks of traversing the wilds of the vale. She takes heavy steps past them, reminding herself that a prayer would be said in their names as she threw herself into the storm.

As three more carts turn the hill top to the spire and park, she makes her way to the back cart while the other students pull themselves from the relative comforts of their carriages.

Lucara met proctor Ackridge, he was thin, thinner than when they'd left Oswyre. His long nose props up a pair of glasses, similar to her own, that rest on his long pointed ears. His long red hair, is peppered with silver strands that only grew longer with their time away from Arnehal. She suspects his time as a professor as done him little service in remembering his days as a student.

"Was your ride manageable?" He asks, ushering students from the cart and pointing them towards the heavy wooden doors at the base of the tower.

Lucara nods. Manageable wasn't the first word that came to mind when navigating mountain passes through torrential downpours— but, it had been so long since she'd left the Academy grounds that she doubts even the Gods could quell her excitement. When she applied to the academy, she expected long hours of study and field exercises, she had no idea that she'd signed away her freedom to refine the magic for professors at monthly seminars. This was her first time outside Arnehal since joining, she would not let Ackridge, nor rain, nor whatever reservations she has about their hired 'help' to stop her from savoring this day.

The final student exits the cart, a human girl named Anna, who shivers from a fever as she is blasted by the rain. Lucara soaks her boots in mud to rush to the young girl, and covers Anna inside of her own cloak. Dismounting from the cart behind Anna, was the mercenary they were required to hire, a Shahharran spellblade who dressed in the combat leathers native to that region. His arms were large and vascular, and exposed, tattooed into his skin were color inks that allowed him to use his offensive magic. Rain pelts the mercenary with the same indifferent ferocity that had stricken her classmates with sickness and killed another— but he maintains a steady face as he scans the treeline surrounding Blackwatch Spire.

Lucara turns to her professor, who had also taken both an annoyed yet profound interest in the mercenary, but Ackridge simply shrugs at the merc's vain stoicism and rushes past her to find shelter from the rain. Lucara watches the mercenary for a moment, trying to see past the hood and mask that only revealed his dark eyes and thick brows. It had frustrated her to no end that he did not talk to them, nor remove the things obscuring his face, but she could only imagine that's how all mercenaries conducted business.

Quickly, she guides Anna towards the spire and the mercenary seems content with the movements of the dark forest. She finds comfort in that. Together, they enter the Blackwatch Spire.

And the heavy doors slam shut behind them.