Chapter Text
Ostentatia really liked Aelwyn.
They had met by happenstance, just bumping into each other at the store, and it felt like a blessing from Logran himself that the pretty private school girl took in interest in her.
They mostly texted and mostly just about school work but sometimes it would dip into personal life stuff.
Well, Ostentatia's personal life stuff more often than not. Aelwyn wanted to know juicy details like if she was dating anyone and who she was hanging out with but Ostentatia managed to turn the conversation back around a few times. Needling the obviously secretly shy girl into opening up little by little.
It was easy to get Aelwyn to complain about her sister, harder to get her talking about her parents, and and uphill battle to hear anything at all about Aelwyn Abernant's friends. From what Ostentatia could gather it sounded like Aelwyn did have them, hung out with them a lot, but that they also totally and completely sucked.
Ostentatia could relate. She didn't much like her own adventuring party either.
But the more they talked and opened up to each other the more Ostentatia liked the snarky elf. Felt comfortable talking to her, felt excited to see her every day.
So when Aelwyn asked her to throw a party- a proper Hudol party, fancy pancy- Ostentatia instantly agreed. And when a chunk of the way through the party Aelwyn asked her to go upstairs, go to Ostentatia’s bedroom- Ostentatia found her heart in her throat and couldn’t say no to those shining blue eyes.
And when Aelwyn asked if she had ever done it before, well…
“Uh- ha- no, no I… I mean don’t tell anyone or nothing but… no.” Ostentatia was not usually the type of girl to be lost for words but here she found herself stumbling over her own tongue like a quaking kid. Aelwyn was so hot. Aelwyn was so cool. Both, at the same time, and Ostentatia could not believe that she had managed to impress her enough for… this. “W- I mean, sure. Why do you ask?”
Ostentatia’s heart felt like it was about to pound out of her chest. But Aelwyn just seemed… sad. Stressed, certainly. Completely at odds with the questions she was asking. “You’re positive?”
Ostentatia laughed and then coughed when the laugh came out too awkwardly. “I don’t think something like that would have slipped my mind.”
Aelwyn stared at her and Ostentatia could practically see the cogs whirling away in her head. Whirling about what, she had no idea. Was this a weird elven… mating ritual type thing? Was Ostentaia passing the test?
“I’m going to double check,” Aelwyn eventually declared, though Ostentatia sort of had the feeling it wasn’t really directed at her.
Aelwyn sat on Ostentatia’s bed next to her and grasped both her hands tightly.
Fuck, her hands were soft. Was that an elf thing, wizard thing, or rich thing? Or maybe it was just all Aelwyn.
Magic began to glow timidly around them but even as she was going through the motions of the spell Aelwyn seemed tense. Not even the expected nervous tense but… tense tense. Like she was about to step off a cliff kind of tense.
“Hey,” Ostentatia spoke up, ignoring the tingle of arcane magic on her skin, “you doing okay? You know we don’t… you don’t have to do this. If you don’t want. That’s okay.”
Aelwyn’s gaze jumped up from their hands to bore holes into Ostentatia’s eyes. The words out of her mouth were hesitant, softer than Ostentatia had ever heard from her. “Yes… yes I do. I- you don’t understand but I do. ”
Ostentatia gripped her hands tightly in a gesture she hoped was assuring. “Let me understand then. Come on, talk to me, what’s up with you?”
“What’s up with me?” Aelwyn repeated with a strained scoff. “What isn’t up with me. Did you realize that you’re actually pleasant to hang out with? That is so rude of you. I don’t have a choice in this matter, I really truly don’t, so all having guilt about it is doing is making my life that much harder.”
Ostentaia blinked at her, slowly getting the sense that maybe, just maybe, there was more going on here than Aelwyn being nervous about sex. “I’m… sorry? Why don’t you got a choice in the matter? I think you’ve got plenty of choices around you.”
“Wouldn’t that be just peachy if I did,” Aelwyn sneered, practically snarled, “but even now that fucking cat is probably watching my every move, ready to sic a dragon on me should I slip up. And who knows! Maybe I already have. Maybe just telling you this much is going to get me killed.”
A soft ding sounded through the air between them and Aelwyn pulled her hands out of Ostentatia’s grip. The spell complete.
Aelwyn laughed, though it wasn’t at all a happy laugh. “Though I suppose it doesn’t matter now, seeing as you were telling the truth. Now nothing I told you is going to matter ever again!”
This rant had been very enlightening for Ostentatia and she felt now that she understood some key parts about the situation.
The first part being that Aelwyn was about to do something. Something she didn’t want to do, was going to regret, and was going to end up very badly for Ostentatia in the long run. Ostentatia didn’t know, exactly, what that was, but she was pretty darn certain she wasn’t going to like it if it happened.
The second thing she understood was that Aelwyn was also in danger and probably being actively watched through scrying or some other means. Ostentatia could not convince her with words to stop whatever was happening because, as long as this cat or dragon or whatever was watching, Aelwyn was stuck.
There was only one solution.
“I do want you to know I’m not enjoying this,” Aelwyn muttered as she dug around in her bag for something. Casually, so the elf didn’t get spooked, Osentiatia leaned over the side of her bed and groped for the thing she always casually left laying there. Aelwyn turned back, some kind of broken crystal in her hand. “You were annoyingly fun. Goodbye Os-”
And then Ostentatia smacked her over the head with her hammer.
The frail elven wizard immediately went down, blacking out as Ostentatia hit her just so on the temple. So used to them being healing machines, people often forgot just how deadly a cleric could be. Ostentatia had a giant hammer, medical knowhow of just where the most vulnerable parts of the body was, and the power of a god behind her. Aelwyn never stood a chance.
Ostentatia stared down at Aelwyn’s now crumpled body on her floor. She looked… almost peaceful. Though not exactly since her head was starting to bleed a little. Ostentatia would fix that.
The crystal that Aelwyn had gotten out had spilled out of her hand and Ostentatia picked it up carefully. It looked very much like a normal crystalcell. Except cracked, obviously broken, and sort of cloudy. What the fuck had she been planning on doing with that?
Just to be on the safe side, Ostentatia cast dispel magic on it. And on the room at large to take care of any Clairvoyants that might have gotten in and spied on Aelwyn, and finally on the girl herself.
Instantly, there was a disappointed chorus of protests from downstairs. Right. The party. She should probably clear that out before trying to drag an unconscious girl anywhere. Ostentatia certainly wasn’t in the mood to party anymore.
She carefully tied Aelwyn’s hands together with a random shirt from her closet- in case the wizard came to long enough to try and teleport away or something- and then left the bedroom, silently closing the door behind her.
She tramped back down her stairs, suddenly annoyed now that this evening was taking such a stupid unexpected turn. This was supposed to be a fun night not a… whatever this was.
Downstairs the party had fully and completely ground to a halt. All of Aelwyn’s elemental girls had disappeared and the Hudol boys that had come for it were visibly upset and confused. The band that Ostentatia had also invited had stopped playing and were instead just glancing around in bewilderment as a good half of their audience had fully vanished into lumps of clay and snow.
At least someone had put out the small fires a few of the elementals had caused, if the scorch marks on the floor were any indication. Small miracles.
And then the front door burst open and slammed against the wall hard enough to dent it.
“Where is she!?!” Aelwyn’s little sister yelled to no one in particular, murder in her eyes.
“Hey, no,” Ostentatia snapped her fingers at her as she finished coming down the stairs, “what are you doing here? You weren’t invited.”
The younger girl did not seem to hear her, or maybe just didn’t care, because she whirled on Ostentatia with a snarl. “My sister. I know she’s here. Where is that bitch?”
Well, good to know the sibling rivalry seemed to go both ways.
“I don’t fucking know,” Ostentatia snapped back, not a fan of anyone yelling at her. She was also lying but whatever, she didn’t know the extent of people that were coercing Aelwyn or whatever was happening. “But what I do know is that you were not invited.” She poked Adaine in the chest, glaring up at her. “That means you’re trespassing. Get out.”
Adaine trembled, hands clenched in fists and glare scathing enough to down a dragon. There was a moment Ostentatia thought the twig of a girl was actually going to try to punch her. Or maybe more likely throw a spell in her face. Ostentatia still had her hammer in her hand, she certainly wasn’t intimidated by the freshman wizard.
But Adaine did not do anything as stupid as attack her. Instead she turned away and redirected her fury somewhere else. “Fabian if you don’t find my sister in the next five seconds I’m killing you instead!”
Ostentatia let her march through her house and to the other Aguefort freshman. That wasn’t exactly leaving but as long as she wasn’t going to ransack Ostentatia’s house looking for her sister it was probably fine for now. Let her get whatever sibling squabble issue she had going on out at her party members.
In the meantime Ostentatia turned her attention to the crowd of Hudol boys who were all shuffling around awkwardly, unsure what to do now that they couldn’t even pretend there were any girls that wanted to talk to them.
“Alright,” Ostentatia said, making a sweeping gesture towards the door, “parties over, everyone get out.”
To her great annoyance the crowd did not immediately scatter at the order. Instead, a groan rose up and the one guy Ostentatia kinda figured was like the leader of this Hudol group- Percy or something- stepped up confidently. “We paid Aelwyn Abernant good money to provide hot girls to our otherwise sausagefest of an event. I- I would get my money’s worth, if it’s all the same to you.”
Adaine’s head whipped around so fast it was a wonder her neck didn’t snap. “You paid Aelwyn for what ?”
Ostentatia ignored her. “Yeah? Well as you can see, that’s not happening anymore. If you want to take it up with Aelwyn and demand your cash back then fine. But she’s not fucking here anymore so get out of my house.”
Percy whatever opened his mouth to argue further so Ostentatia smashed the butt of her hammer on the ground and cast Thaumaturgy to make the ground shake in time to her voice.
“I said get out!”
The Hudol wizard boys scattered like she had just dropped a bomb in the middle of them. Most raced out the door but some were so desperate in their haste they scrambled out windows or jumped the back fence.
After a few moments the only people left were the half a dozen Augefort kid s, who Ostentatia raised a brow towards. “That includes you, freshmen. Get lost.”
The teifling bard- who’s drummer was making a big show of packing up his equipment, giving them all an excuse to linger- surged forward. “What did that dude mean Aelwyn was ‘providing hot girls’ to their parties?”
“What are you, stupid?” Ostentatia asked, pointing to one of the piles of rock and snow, “all the girls besides the four of us right here were elementals. Fucking wizard boys didn’t care none, long as they were good to look at.”
The freshman all exchanged glances at that, Adaine trembling so hard it looked as if she were about to burst out of her skin.
Eventually, the goblin kid coughed and stepped forward. “We just- there’s been girls going missing around school, right? We briefly thought Aelwyn might have been… involved in that.”
Oh. Yeah that would make sense, giving that Aelwyn had just tried to kidnap her four minutes ago. “Well, that’s not what’s going on here. No real girls were harmed in the making of this party.” Except, ironically now, Aelwyn.
Adaine had apparently run out of will power to keep her mouth shut because she blurted out almost desperately, “can you tell my parents? Can you tell them that Aelwyn was here at a party and that she was being paid to make sexy constructs or whatever? Please, she will get in so much trouble.”
“Why the hell would I do that?” Ostentatia asked, genuinely baffled, “Aelwyn’s my friend, who I invited here. I’m not going to go get her in trouble for no reason.”
Adaine looked equally shocked and confused by that as Ostentatia had been by her question. And then the shock turned to anger and the girl’s hands screwed up into fists as her face flushed. “But Aelwyn’s a bitch!”
Okay, Ostentatia had seriously had enough of this. In one movement she picked the skinny girl up and threw her over her shoulder.
This act obviously caught Adaine off guard because she only froze, stiff as a board, as Ostentatia turned around, walked back across her house, and deposited the elf outside the door.
“What the fuck ?” Adaine said from the porch, staring up on her back at Ostentatia.
Ostentatia turned to the rest of the Aguefort kids, who were staring at her, dumbfounded. “Are the rest of you going to walk on your own feet or am I going to have to drag you out too?”
Thankfully- because Ostentatia didn’t think she’d actually be able to move the half orc drummer- the rest of them filed out promptly. The human even helping Adaine back to her feet and gently trying to calm her down as the elf visibly vibrated with pent up frustration.
As soon as the last freshmen crossed the threshold, Ostentatia slammed the door behind them. And then proceeded to lean against the steady wood and bury her face in her hands.
This was fucked up. A fucked up situation. Not where Ostentatia thought her evening was going to go.
But nothing would get done if she moped around so Ostentatia pushed herself back onto her face and began the trudge up the stairs to her room. She would need to clean up the mess in the rest of the house too, before her parents got back, but the unconscious girl in her room definitely had to be priority number one.
Thankfully, Aelwyn was still asleep when Ostentatia got back. Like, actually asleep- or trancing- not just in knocked out unconsciousness. Jeeze, guess running around kidnapping people took it out of you if she was this exhausted.
Carefully, Ostentatia bundled the other girl into her arms, making sure to support her neck and legs.
At the jostling, Aelwyn groaned and squirmed, in the process of waking up.
Ostentatia hurried as quickly as she dared without risk dropping her elven burden. Down the stairs to the main floor, and then through the kitchen door down another set of stairs to the basement.
The Wallace’s were a family of clerics. Not each individual member, of course, but as a whole. No matter your path in life, black smith or union worker or influencer, if you were a Wallace you worshiped Logran Soulforger, the god of the forge. Not everyone could make magic happen with their worship like Ostentatia but everyone believed in him.
That was why the basement to the Wallace house was holy ground. It was just practical, to have a place of worship so close by. The far end of the one solid room that was the basement was taken up by a shrine. A shrine forge combo really. One could do work there, next to the crackling hearth, as a form of worship. Ostentatia often made all her own jewelry in that shrine.
The close half of the basement, where the stairs connected to it, was pretty much just a normal middle class basement set up. Carpet, a couch, some bean bags, pool table, the works. But despite its average appearance the entire basement was holy ground. That meant that whoever was spying on Aelwyn- was threatening her- would have no power while here.
Ostentatia dumped the older girl on the couch and undid the hasty bonds. No need for that now that Ostentatia was here. What was Aelwyn going to do? Attack her? She could certainly try. See how far that got her.
Aelwyn groaned and blearily blinked open her eyes, squinting up at Ostentatia like she was hungover and the lights were too bright. “What the fuck just happened?”
“You tried to kidnap me,” Ostentatia informed her, crossing her arms to really show how pissed off she was at the action.
“Why does my head feel like someone’s taking a jackhammer to it?” The elf mumbled, pressing a hand to her face.
“You tried to kidnap me,” Ostentatia repeated, “so I went and uno reversed your sorry ass before you did something you might regret.” She reached out and bopped the top of Aelwyn’s head with a fist, pouring a Cure Wounds into it as she did.
Aelwyn flinched at the strike but the magic cleared up her eyes and she sat straighter on the couch, looking around frantically. “Where are we? What did you- how long has it been?”
Ostentatia shrugged. “Like ten minutes? Tops? Also we’re safe, even from people trying to spy on you so don’t worry ‘bout that.”
Aelwyn froze, her body going stiff and her face pale. Even her cute pointing ears pressed back against her head in horror. “Oh no… oh fuck no. I said… I spilled half of my fucking secrets and didn’t even get you in a crystal! I am so dead. She’s going to kill me. I’m going to get eaten. ” Aelwyn tilted back against the couch, one hand to her forehead as she stared in shocked dismay at the ceiling. “My life is literally over.”
Ostentatia snorted. “Don’t be so dramatic. I’m not going to kill you and that’s all you need to worry about right now.” She shifted, awkwardly, and let some of the annoyance drain from her voice so the next words could come off just a little more reassuring. “I’m serious about it being safe. This is holy ground, no one can come get you or even know where you are.”
Aelwyn finally looked at her again. Her eyes were frightened but… dully. Like when you heard bad news you had been bracing for. “...do you… know Detect Poison and Disease?”
Well, that was certainly out of the blue. “What? Yeah, why?”
Aelwyn grimaced. “Will you cast it on me? And tell me if anything is… active?”
Ostentatia stared. “ Active? What the hell you mean- are you actively being poisoned right now?”
“No, I… would you just do it already?”
Ostentatia squinted suspiciously but Aelwyn just shifted on the couch, not making eye contact and looking weirdly nervous for her.
Without saying anything Ostentatia went ahead and cast the spell, placing a glowing hand on Aelwyn’s hair. The girl flinched, slightly, at the contact which made Ostentatia frown harder.
The spell went to work and the good news was that Aelwyn did not seem to be poisoned, active or otherwise. The bad news was that she did seem to be sick. The disease part of the spell was pinging off. Something was in the elf’s blood but it was… muted. Dormant. And a little more pushing revealed it drawing back from the radiant magic.
“What the hell?” Ostentatia said, stepping back and letting her magic drop. She knew lesser restoration but not greater. And whatever this was didn’t seem as weak as a little poison. “Why do you have some fucking dark magic in your veins?”
Aelwyn let out a little scoffing laugh. “You have no idea how accurate ‘fucking dark magic is’. But is it active ? Is she… I mean- is it active?”
“No,” Ostentatia admitted, “I think the Hallow of the basement is suppressing it. Doesn’t seem to like holy magic.” Aelwyn breathed a visible sigh of relief and Ostentatia raised a brow questioningly before flopping down onto the couch beside her. “So, you gonna talk now?”
Aelwyn chewed on her lip but only for a moment before smoothing out her expression into something blank and condescending and really hot. “Fine. What would you like to talk about?”
Ostentatia stared at her, Aelwyn stared back. They were doing a lot of that today, staring at each other, trying to get a read on the other.
Ostentatia had a pretty good read. “Are you fucking stupid? You tried to kidnap me. Remember? Did I clonk you on the head too hard and make you lose your memories or something?”
Aelwyn had the audacity to roll her eyes. “Yes, alright, I tried to kidnap you. And you-” She gestured to the space around them. “Got me back for that, it seems. So what? Do you want me to apologize ?”
“Jeeze louise, Ael, I want you to explain. Why did you go and do something like that? Who’s after you? What the hell is that disease in your blood? Basic things!”
Aelwyn put a hand to her mouth and clicked her tongue as she visibly thought about her answer. “I was, you could say, coerced? There are many things going on in this town Ostentatia. Things you wouldn’t even imagine. ”
“So tell me,” Ostentatia demanded, her patience running thin, “no one but me can hear you down here, not even the lady you keep almost mentioning. So spill and we’ll figure out how to make sure you don’t get eaten or whatever you said.”
Aelwyn stared at her, gaze hard and searching. Ostentatia didn’t blink, didn’t look away, and just kept lifting her eyebrows higher and higher in exasperation at every dragged out second.
Eventually Ostentatia won the staring contest because Aelwyn flopped backwards with a groan. “Oh, fuck it. It’s not like things could get any worse at this point.”