Chapter Text
Night Raven Collage second-year student Jamil Viper is driven to madness about once a week. It shouldn't be surprising, considering the amount of work on his plate, but that's usually the least of his worries. Take his morning routine for example. He started every morning by arranging the meal preparations for the day so that breakfast and dinner could be served without a sitch. Of course, he would always get interrupted by something that would throw off his rhythm. That something was usually Kalim, but honestly, he’d come to expect anything from the other dorms to magical disasters to be the cause of said interruptions.
So when a student comes barging into the kitchens one morning as he’s finishing off the day’s meal prep, he’s honestly not that worried until he catches the exceptionally distressed look on their face.
“Vice-dorm leader Viper! Come quick! I think you better take a look at this!” he cried from the doorway.
Jamil frowned. He’d sent that first-year to take out the kitchen garbage earlier. “What on earth is he screaming about?” he muttered to himself under his breath as he dragged his hand across his face. It can't be worse than the time they found a roach in the pantry next to the rice sacks. Jamil damn near had a heart attack and couldn't eat rice for two weeks afterwards, even after thorough cleaning. The boy was fidgeting so much Jamil was worried he might wet himself. It seems that once again, he was the only one keeping his shit together. He sighed as he carefully put away the apron and clipboard and turned towards the boy.
“Very well, lead the way. ”
The boy led him down back behind the dormitory, where the garbage containers were kept. To throw away garbage was an unpleasant job for two reasons. One, the containers happened to be facing the desert, meaning unbroken, constant sunlight, resulting in it being the hottest part of the Scarabia dormitory, and thus an unpleasant trek. This caused problem number two; the heat of the sun accelerating the food rot, causing an explosive, expansive odour of rotting food across the area.
As they exited the building, Jamil lowered his hood to shield his eyes from the glaring morning sun, already high in the sky. Jamil turned his attention towards the two containers placed at the far corner of the building, as far away as humanly possible from the doorway so as to avoid most of the smell, although it still wasn't enough, as a wave of rotting food stench wafted its way up his nose on the breeze.
"Over here!" the boy pointed behind the second container, which Jamil now noticed was placed at an odd angle, as if it had been moved. Then, he finally noticed the large concave trail in the sand, coming from the desert, as if a giant snake had slithered over the dunes. The vice- dorm leader furrowed his brow. If a desert creature had come crawling all the way here for food it must have been desperate- and desperate animals were always the most vicious and problematic to deal with.
Walking over cautiously, Jamil noticed something shining in the sand, hidden in the track. Jamil picked it up. A scale. A bright cerulean fish scale. Jamil frowned again, now for an entirely different reason. That was more than a little odd... The vice-dorm leader followed the trail to where the boy was standing at the edge of the container, nervously shifting his eyes between himself and whatever lay behind. As Jamil cautiously peeked over, he noticed the creature seemed to have tried to bury itself under the container, into the cooler, shady sand below. The edge of a giant tail was half-sticking out from under the container. Looking closer, it reminded him of the end of a very large water lizard but with a strange colouration and a producing fin running along its centre. Jamil saw the creature was lying on its side and it's tail twisted in several unnatural ways, as if broken in multiple places. Moving must have been agonizing, Jamil thought, unbidden. He had assumed the thing was dead until it suddenly gave a sharp spasm and Jamil heard the shallow, ragged breaths it was making, like it was struggling to breathe.
Gesturing quickly for the first-year to stand back, Jamil gave a magical command and moved the container using wind magic before holding his Magical pen in front of him, ready to attack the creature should it lash out. As the wind magic knocked the container aside, Jamil cautiously moved closer towards it until he followed the length of the body upwards with its eyes, finally noticing the top half of the creature. Storm grey coloured eyes widened in shock and horror as he saw what it was.
"It...it can't be. This...this is bad!" he gasped out.
Ignoring his own many burning questions, in a split-second Jamil channelled all of his years of chaos-management experience into quick, life-saving decision making and turned towards the first-year. "Quick, contact Kalim at once! Get him out of the dorm-leader's morning meeting- tell him there's an emergency and his unique magic is needed, now . Send someone to fetch the headmaster as well, he needs to be informed immediately. I'll go and get more students to carry him inside." he barked.
The younger student stood to attention at once, not questioning the older's orders for a second.
"Ok, sure, but what shall we tell the headmaster?"
The vice-dorm leader looked down at the unconscious figure before him, dread creeping up his spine like ice.
"Tell him... someone's attacked a student. Most likely left for dead."
The boy nodded, nerves mingling with determination as he started running back inside.
Jamil hesitated for a moment before clicking his tongue and yelled after the boy, "Wait, before you go, grab Azul Ashengrotto too while you're getting Kalim...he'll want to know what's happened to one of his dear eels…"
Jamil turned back to the long, aquamarine body littered in blossoming bruises and infected cuts, colouring the torso in various shades. And not just any eel either...Floyd Leech-Octavinelle’s muscle and one of the strongest fighters in all of Night Raven College had somehow lost a fight and wound up stranded in the desert.