Michael Archon was a handsome man, clean shaven with dark curled hair parted down the side that hung just below his ears. Pale skin and large glasses with circular rims gave him a discerningly innocent looking stare. Michael looked nearly human, if not for the pearlescent ivory horns sprouting from his skull he could easily pass as one. If Leesha remembered correctly his family line was rumored to have either the blood of dragons or to traditionally follow a draconic path of apotheosis. His voice was also a crisp and clear tenor as it traveled through the winter air, and it belied none of his intentions, he, it seemed friendly enough.
He wasn't the last person Leesha wanted to see in the world, but he was certainly in the top five on the list of people Leesha didn't want to see. Though even she had to admit she knew a lot less about him than she did his family, and that it was entirely possible that he wanted as little to do with their arranged marriage as she did. What little she did know about his family told her that was, however, unlikely.
Her instincts screamed at her to run and hide, or to attack him with the lightning spell she had just been working on. She wasn't proud of either of her initial thoughts, but she still had them. Deliberately though she took a breath and set those thoughts if not totally aside at least away from the forefront of her mind.
"If you're here about the marriage, you can go fuck yourself." Alright then, clearly she didn't set those thoughts far enough aside. Though her prospective fiance only looked amused as he stood their arms clasped behind his back as Leesha leaned on her staff.
"Ah. To the heart of the matter then, Leesha my dear fiance' if you have no desire to get married that's fine with me. I've pieced together that you weren't consulted about our upcoming nuptials, and frankly from the point of view of our families this is more akin to a business deal." Michael frowned down at her. " I find multiple things about this scenario distasteful, not the least of which is the damage that has been done to my reputation." The draconian man let out an exasperated sigh and unclasped his arms, motioning to the rocky outcrop on which Leesha stood. "May I?"
To say Leesha was having her expectations rocked by the turbulent sea of reality would be an understatement. She had expected demands, temper tantrums, bullying, even violence. What she hadn't expected was for her issue with the marriage to be hand waved away and in the best of ways no less.
Still, she wasn't some two penny rube when it came to manners, and she stepped to the side offering him space on the outcropping. "By all means. I'm a little surprised though, your reaction isn't what I expected."
Michael alights on the outcropping, his crisp polished boots clacking lightly against the rock and he smirks in rueful bemusement. "Well if it is any consolation, you're and everyone else's expectations are in fact my problem with all of this. Do you know what has been said of me, since your disappearance from King's college a month ago?"
Leesha narrows her eyes in thought, not quite understanding where Michael seems to be taking the conversation. " No, I suppose I don't." To which Michael nods and looks out over the Hudson River slowly churning by beside them.
" I am, apparently, the most loathsome man of means in all the country. A beater of women, loose in both booze, morals, and sexual proclivity. The rumors can't seem to decide if it was my wandering eye or my outrageous acts of violence that drove you away." A tsk of Michaels tongue cracks the air like a whip, and a weary laugh escapes him, as Leesha notices that despite how well held together the young man is he clearly has bags under his eyes.
"Seeing that we have never met, that I am not prone to vices, and that I am an oathsworn [Pacifist] of Via. It seems rather obvious to me at least that these rumors are nonsense." He raises an eyebrow at Leesha and gives her a conspiratorial nod. "However, according to the hair-brained gossips of our time, the only reason for a young woman to flee a man of means like myself must mean that I am a true terror. A devil on the material plane in need of a good smiting by the gods themselves."
At this point Leesha understood what had happened, at least in the broadest strokes. Michael was being vilified, and her family was probably either allowing those rumors to spread without pushback or helping them along in an attempt to distance themselves from any political fallout. " You want me to make an appearance then? Some kind of event, where we muck about in the mire of politics and glad hand to let people know this was all just a spot of drama but nothing so nefarious?"
"You've gotten it in one, Ms. Amanecer. I'd be lying if I said this hasn't been rather a nightmare of trying to put out fires as rumors spread. Though I can understand needing to...distance oneself from the heart of the problem" Michael looked relieved to be so quickly understood, and even went so far as to give her a smile.
While Leesha didn't want to reveal her location to her family quite this quickly, she also knew that trying to continue on in hiding would be like fighting the incoming tide. "Alright, seems fair enough. You've been rather polite considering I did the equivalent of placing you on top of a political landmine. Even if that wasn't my intention." Leesha grimace and ground her summoned staff into a crack in the rock so she could let go of it and grab her cigar case, pulling out the two fresh tobacco cigars, and offering one to Michael.
"Figure we go over the details of all this over a smoke?" She asked as she lit her own cigar with a controlled use of [Fire Blast]. Taking a few controlled puffs as the flame danced on her outstretched fingers.
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Michael for his part took the offered cigar and lit it with a silver pocket lighter. The surprisingly stern young draconian human hybrid kept one arm behind his back as he took a long languishing drag of the cigar. "All, that sounds fine Ms. Amanecer."
Leesha shrugs and blows out a long plume of smoke which she uses [Transmute Object] on to turn into an angry parody of her mothers face hovering in the air. "Probably for the best that I publicly denounce my families actions if I want to finish the process of cutting ties." That statement caused her former fiance to blink owlishly at her, and Leesha nearly laughed at how agog he seemed.
Michael regarded her for a long moment in silence, before he shrugged and blew his own plume of smoke, using a divine magic spell Leesha didn't recognize to make the smoke sparkle briefly before igniting in a small flash of holy flame ."Quite the drastic action to take." He paused, having said that and shook his head. "Surely a little bit of family meddling is worth having access to the Goblinslide Iron works and its resources?"
"I...will admit that the initial loss of resources is proving more difficult to deal with than I anticipated. I was however always planning to go my own way. It is a pity I didn't finish college though. In hindsight I really would have liked to stay until I had a better handle on the rituals I had been studying."
Despite Michaels surprise at Leesha's desire for independence from her family, they eventually managed to hash out a plan for Leesha to show up to an event or two, and glad hand enough to let people know that, no Michael wasn't some sort of monster wearing the skin of a man, and that yes Leesha's family were in fact a terrible group of busy bodies.
By the time Michael left and Leesha was alone on the riverside once more, the sun had passed noon and was well on its way toward setting. Harumphing Leesha grumpily announced to the world "Boys! You go out for an afternoon of spellcasting and they pester you the whole dang time! At least he was quick to understand I was under the effects of a [Polymorph] spell and that's why I didn't match any of the photos he had seen of me."
Flicking the ashes of her cigar, Leesha grabbed her staff and twirled it absently, she had time enough to at least break the last two stone pillars she'd made. She'd done a typical blast spell to start the day...so for her next one she'd go with something a little more complex.
[Summon Specific Object] The spell form completed in her mind almost instantly and she poured mana into the creation of one of the mainstay production items of Goblin Side Iron works, their famous seventy five millimeter artillery cannon! Folding the mana into a permanent structure to make it persist. She did the same to summon a shell, though not a standard round, this one had a lot less powder than normal in the cap and was a hollow round of aluminum, designed to crumble but not splinter or explode. She was after all on public lands and a full power shot of a military grade cannon was probably...maybe...completely illegal.
--
"Fire in the hole!" Leesha screamed from a safe distance back with summoned ear protection, as she cast [Animate Object] on the cannon to both aim and fire it. With the thwump, followed by a hollow ting sound you only get when firing inappropriate ammo out of conventional artillery, the farthest pillar from the shore shattered. Stone returned to the mana from whence it came. Caught up in the excitement of live firing artillery Leesha recast her spell aiming for the last pillar and nearly dry fired the cannon before remembering she needed to summon an additional round.Then with a small explosion of stone debris and anther soft thuwmp of sound the last pillar was gone! A purple puff of mana signaling the stones return to a gas.
Cheering, Leesha raced back to the riverside even as she dismissed the cannon, the summoned object fading into a cloud of purple motes of mana. She knew it was childish to keep playing around like this, she could be working on her ritual magic, or Finding other avenues of income, but sometimes Leesha just needed to blow off steam and it wasn't like the day had been completely unproductive!
She'd met with her former fiance, finalized plans to make sure their marriage was never going forward! I mean, sure if you want to get technical about it she herself had been set upon by circumstances, but that didn't make the stress of the encounter or the past few weeks any less real or present. So determined, Leesha went back to figuring out how she wanted to destroy the last stone pillar.
Deciding to call it their, Leesha recast her [Magical Flight] spell and took off into the sky, flying back in the direction of the city and its local trams. Today has not necessarily been the day of training and relaxation she had hoped it would be. That didn't make it a bad day though, and her conversation with Michael had reminded her, she needed to stop by the New York City Library. Just because she had dropped out of college didn't mean she couldn't do a bit of self study here and there.
Her flight home was uneventful, though the setting sun outlined the tram station with gold and orange light, casting long shadows that made everything stand out in stark contrast. The people going to and fro with the smell of gasoline powered vehicles, horses and fresh hot food from nearby stands in the air made the moment feel so very crisp to Leesha. She took a moment to bask in the wonder of a perfect moment, before stepping into the tram station and nearly sliding off her feet as her boots hit a patch of ice.
Barely avoiding a fall by a panicked flailing and windmilling of arms Leesha looked around with a blush, luckily only gathering a few stares. Before fixing her jacket in a rather performative manner before finding the right tram to take back to the city and scuttling on it with all the dignity of those that slip and nearly fall in public.
--
Returning to her apartment found the communal halls of her building filled with more foot traffic than she was used to. A family of halflings trotted down the staircase as she entered and they passed by, making room for her in the hall as she did the same, both turned sideways and gave polite smiles. The orange curls of their hair bouncing as each one nodded in turn the mother and father echoing each other with the polite refrain of "G'day".
Leesha gave the family a warm smile and passed them by, noticing a couple of elves in the communal kitchen, and an older human woman slipping quietly out of the bathroom before she herself made it to her door.
Laying in bed later that evening, her head on a pillow Leesha realized that she'd forgotten to get anything to eat. "Drat." Her stomach proceeded to announce its shame and disappointment at having such an abusive and disrespectful host. "Hush you, we'll get a big breakfast tomorrow to make up for it."