Once Upon a Midnight Eerie...

A wizard apparated onto the outer grounds of Eden. He knew not the hour but it had to be sometime after midnight. The robes he wore were almost as dark as the present dead-of-night, but the moment he stepped into the light one would be in for quite a surprise. Lycurgus Blake was covered from head to toe, flesh and cloth, in splattered blood. Most of the blood was someone else's, though the wizard had not gotten out of his bloodbath completely unscathed. He was, without question, healthier than his adversaries. For one thing Lycurgus was still breathing, and in relatively one piece.

Lycurgus dragged a black cloth sack behind him as he prowled his way into the Purist headquarters. He deliberately tripped the alarm, allowed it to continue for a little, and then cast the appropriate charms to silence and reset it. The wizard heard one of the sentries approach mere seconds before a burst of wandlight was shoved into Lycurgus' face.

"Bloody Hell!" gasped the henchman, taking a step back and pointing his wand away from the unpredictable wizard's face. "What in Merlin's name happened to you?!"

Lycurgus squinted through the wandlight, pain attempting to cleave his eyes in two. "Just getting back from a party, what's it look like? I even brought back party favors..." the wizard snarled, raising the sack with a shaking fist. "Now stand aside!"

Despite being allowed to pass, Lycurgus painfully cursed the man on his way through. The henchman's screams of pain etched a smirk on Lycurgus' blood-encrusted face.


((Next person who wants to post can run into Lycurgus/"Seth" [a.k.a. "Curry"] wherever throughout Eden, lol.))

At the very top of the list of ways Ariadne Grey least preferred to be woken was Eden's security alarm spell. The sound jangled every nerve ending in her body and she jolted awake in bed, cursing furiously even as she shoved the sheets away and began dressing hurriedly.

Hastily throwing a black silk dressing robe over her plain red nightgown, she snatched her wand from her bedside table and tied the robe as she stepped into a pair of slippers and angrily thumped a small, empty picture frame hanging on the wall. A panel slid open, revealing her study, through which she passed before wrenching the door open and flying down the hall in the direction of the disturbance.

Chances were that it was only a sentry getting sloppy on the night shift, but regardless -- whoever it was would be punished for waking her. She slowed her pace when the alarm turned off, but then she heard what was unmistakably a scream, and, eyes wide in real panic, broke into a full-out sprint, leading with her wand. In truth, there was not much the always slight and now more recently skeletal Ariadne could do if Eden was actually under attack, but she ran forward anyway, and consequently crashed into a very bloody stranger.

Lycurgus saw the running woman, wondering vaguely at the reason for her haste. He thought for sure she would run right by him to whatever such urgent errand she had. The wizard wasn't going to be moved from his path, expecting her to see him and alter her course. A grunt was forced from his lungs as the woman - Ariadne Grey, he realized - soundly collided into him.

Although there wasn't much to the slight frame of Ariadne, Lycurgus stumbled sideways. A few vials fell out of his pockets at the jolt. "Oi! Watch it!" he snarled, stooping to pick up the containers that - thanks to a spell - did not break despite being made of glass. The contents pulsed with a glow that to the trained eye would indicate one of two things: siphoned magic, or the extracted soul of some unfortunate victim.

"What in Bloody Merlin's name is your hurry?!" Lycurgus growled, though didn't truly seem to care.

Hitting Lycurgus felt very like running directly into a brick wall; Ariadne went sprawling backwards, seeing stars. It took her a few muddled moments before she recognised him through all of the blood and her own haziness; they'd never met in person, but she knew him from the papers, of course. Corvus had taken a keen interest in Lycurgus Blake.

But he was in Azkaban -- or St. Mungo's, she couldn't remember which it was as the case had interested her far less -- and certainly not an expected visitor. It didn't take much to put two and two together, and realise that it was him who set off the alarms. The information did nothing to alleviate her already foul mood, and his rude "greeting" didn't help, either.

"Well you see, some idiot set off the alarms. Funnily enough, the skull-shattering caucophany combined with someone screaming bloody murder was enough to wake and alarm me, hence why I came running. I assume your arrival is to blame," she snarled, making to shove herself back to her feet. An odd, pulsating glow caught her eye, and instead of rising, she reached over and snatched up one of the fallen vials. Her face went utterly white and she froze, looking up at Lycurgus.

"Where did you get this?"

Lycurgus scoffed the moment the word 'idiot' had left the witch's mouth. He'd certainly been called worse - and by his own family, even! The wizard looked down at the witch with a leer in his eye despite the fact he knew the woman to be of high rank within Eden. It all changed as she ranted on: amusement slowly replacing his own irritation.

His lips twitched and tugged, trying with all their might to get the man to smile his trademark, twisted smile. Eventually Lycurgus finally let it break through as he gave a nod for a bow. "That 'someone' was the sentry. Annoying bugger, but he's got a delightful screaming voice. Could almost have mistaken it for a woman's..." Lycurgus grinned then, allowing his eyes to roam over Ariadne a moment.

Lycurgus had replaced all but one of the vials, carefully replacing the precious items back into his pocket. It was practically a race to reach the last one. Unfortunately, Lycurgus was both much too stiff and much too slow. With a scowl he stood up again. The wizard watched her suspiciously, silently preparing himself in case he would need to chase Ariadne down for the vial. She didn't seem to look too happy that he had it. Or perhaps she was merely surprised.

"Where do you think I got it?" Lycurgus snapped in retort. "This isn't my blood! Or, at least, most of it isn't." The wizard glanced at his robes to assess the damages, more for the sake of dramatics on Ariadne's behalf than anything else. "I went on a little mission for our Lord. He'll be expecting that, so if you don't mind...?" Lycurgus explained in little more than a growl, holding out a gloved hand in rigid demand for the vial.

Ariadne scowled as Lycurgus sized her up; his defense certainly hadn't invented the whole "insanity" angle, or perhaps it was the fact that he was spattered with gore that made her less-than-keen to test that out. In any event, he didn't actually advance on her, which was good for both of them, really. She was a small woman, and he was clearly injured, so a fight would probably be a close thing. Ariadne's concern was for whatever unfortunate soul had crossed Lycurgus' path earlier -- the sentry, not his victims. If Corvus had indeed ordered their deaths, they were no one of importance anyway.

"Where is he?" she demanded, still scowling. The expression generally did not leave her face, and after awhile learned to stop telling her to smile for fear of earning a snarled hex. Despite the breakdown in her relationship with Corvus, she still enjoyed a protected status which meant she was not one to be messed with -- her ability to stand up for herself notwithstanding.

Lycurgus, on the other hand, probably had no idea who she was, and seemed unlikely to care. Yes -- it would be best to tread carefully, though her hand yearned to slap him for daring to address her so rudely. She held the vial out of his reach and examined it, trying to determined if it was a soul or magic. Sometimes it could be hard to tell, and the flickering torchlight certainly did not help things along.

"This was under Corvus' orders?" she asked suspiciously, although she felt a pang of something like jealousy and respect. Jealousy because Corvus never had her go out anymore to do anything more difficult than collect potion ingredients; respect because anyone who could easily siphon magic and collect souls was a powerful wizard not to be trifled with. She had no choice but to view him as on her own level, despite the increasingly bad impression he was making. Somehow she knew that he would one day prove to be a massive thorn in her side.

"Who?" Lycurgus replied smartly. "The sentry? Oh, he's still out there. Where I left him. Probably a little sore, but I couldn't resist having a little fun. The Cruciatus Curse is always such a joy to inflict." The wizard flashed Ariadne a toothy grin.

His mood shifted once again to a darker thread, rolling his eyes when Ariadne refused to give him the vial. "That one happens to be magic, if you absolutely must know," Lycurgus sighed, giving an impatient wiggle of his gloved fingers for her to hand the little bottle over. "I collected both magic and souls, since I happened to be in the neighborhood."

A caramel eyebrow hiked up at Ariadne's questioning. "Yes. Who do you think would send me out to kill bloodtraitors and mudbloods of my choosing - Minister Lightle?!" he scoffed. The thought of their muggle-born-loving Minister for Magic ordering such a thing amused Lycurgus, and for the briefest of moments his smirk resurfaced.

"Now, if you'd be so kind... I'd like that vial back."