Name: Leander Harris Leighton-Octavius
Age: 15
Birthday: Easter
Gender: Male
Category: Student
Class: High School
Grade: Ten
Appearance Description: Leander really is still a child, but he has recently begun to grow from a soft, innocent-looking ball into a theoretically-eventually elegant stick. He currently stands at about 5'7", but that won't last long. His face would be narrow and bony, a good frame for his almost excessively straight nose, if it weren't for the lingering babyfat still keeping his cheeks company. His eyes are the faded yellow-green of grass that spent all summer under a rotting box without sunlight only to finally be free - for the first frost of autumn. His skin is a bit frosted as well, and tends to seem tinted purple; he is almost always chilled.
It doesn't help that Leander's hair is consistently dyed lavender and streaked with cyan and pink. Yes, it is intended to look like cotton candy. He gave up on getting his hair to not be fluffy and wavy and impossible to work with a while back and now just flaunts it. It's thick and very much does its own thing, and all Leander can control is the technical length of each strand. His bangs are quite long overall, but he braids the left front quarter of his head in front of his ear. That braid is tied off with a silver chain set up like miniature hand cuffs; it is the anchor for one of his favourite familiars.
It's hardly the only metal on his person either. Weak-willed parents are a wonderful thing when it comes to getting legal permission for piercings. His left ear is pierced five times so far - twice on the lobe and three times along the upper outer edge - but all his ear piercings are currently regular earrings. He needs more familiars. His tongue is also pierced - that one he did himself - and the diamond stud in it is definitely enchanted. It's the anchor for his twin's soul and he has no intention of ever taking it out. It is also spectacularly worked, with even the seam between stone and metal seemingly nonexistent. The silver body of the piercing is simple and fluid, curving like water and shimmering slightly, and the diamond itself is perfectly round and smooth but for the delicate etchings of two small asian dragons circling each other across its surface. It was Cedar's last work.
Leander also has a small bone knife that anchors another of his preferred familiars, which is usually kept in a sheath on his hip. His remaining anchors are all embedded in his flesh, strange hard spots and ridges beneath the skin of his left forearm. The distortions are very much visible and often somewhat bruised - and yes, they can get infected if he wasn't careful about cleaning everything before consuming familiar souls - and he almost always wears a glove on that arm. He has a variety of gloves available, but all reach at least to his elbow and are usually single-coloured. If he ever wears a watch (mostly to class), it is on his left wrist and made of metal.
Other than his glove, there is one unenchanted accessory that Leander is rarely without. It is his family's heirloom, a magic relic of considerable power... and everyone thinks it's the diamond-shaped pendant joining the ends of the chain on Leander's brow that holds the power. It isn't. It's there to look pretty and distract people. The chain itself is the real relic, and casually boosts Leander's magic power, focus, and accuracy. The chain is silver with a slight pewter haze that resists polishing, and the pendant is yellow-green bowenite set in a simple silver frame.
When it comes to clothing, Leander is still working out his personal style a bit. For now, he's a fan of heavy, buckle-and-button-laden jackets (his favourite has lace sleeves and an upright collar), black in general, and soft-soled custom-made leather boots that hug him from toe to knee. Leander also likes hats, especially toques, and will wear skeleton-patterned clothing year round, be it a Jack Skellington toque or a stretchy long-sleeved shirt with bony handprints.
Personality Description: you're so cynical, narcissistic cannibal
Leander is confident and prioritizes himself above all else. He works to strengthen himself, goes out of his way to improve his life, and collects money and power of whatever kind he can in order to leave himself on top and everyone else in the dust or under his thumb. He doesn't trust other people, and is quick to divide them into groups: those not worth any attention at all, those he wants under his direct control, and those who currently outpower him. The final group bothers him. He knows he's still young and has a long way to go, but he d o e s n o t w a n t anyone to have power over him.
Sly, confident, and ready with a smirk more than a smile, Leander understands morals and laws but really doesn't care about them. He'll play by the rules when it suits him, and break them when it suits him. He is fully aware of consequences, however, and will definitely moderate his actions with respect to the potential backlash. He's smart, and he has plans. He isn't interested in putting things on hold because he's found himself a place in prison or juvie, and he sure as hell isn't interested in dying.
Ever. See, Leander has two goals. Become more powerful than any other member of his extended clan, and not die. Perhaps it would be better phrased as a goal and a fear. The core of his issues with being under authority or influence is that it puts his survival out of his control and into the hands of someone else.
Even the thought of being under someone else's power actively bothers Leander. He can tolerate pretending to obey others - it's how he got through school so far, and into an apprenticeship that was really just an excuse to read through an established mage's private notes - but actually being bound by someone else's will. That.
That gives him nightmares and drives him into a corner like a rabid rat. He will attack blindly, regardless of who's in front of him, and his sole goal will be to escape by destroying the connection between him and that other person. He has never been driven to this, but then again he is young. People control children differently than adults, and Leander is more than smart enough to work within the child-adult system.
Leander doesn't believe that someone can be both kind and powerful. In his experience, kindness correlates with weakness. His parents were kind, and spineless. His sister was kind, and now the remnants of her life reside on his tongue. He preys on kindness so that he can be more powerful. He has no intention of being truly kind, and he will only throw that illusion around if it convinces someone or something to come into one of his cages. Leander is a liar with a sleek smile and a smooth tongue, and his interest in you is purely selfish.
Powers: Puppet Mage
Stage One: Compulsion
Pricking a living, fleshed being with an enchanted needing induces a compulsion to find Leander. The inducement of the compulsion is by far the simplest part of this step, for the ritual to enchant a needle is... complex.
The needle itself must first be produced by Leander's own hands, or at least scrutinized and learned in detail. The material determines the strength of the inducement; a splinter of wood will be less powerful than pure silver that Leander has forged himself. Leander must chant over the needle as he makes in, and within a working circle that focuses his magic and binds it appropriately. The runes for that circle can vary, but more powerful and complex circles will improve the needle's power.
Once Leander has created a needle, he still has to actually enchant it for the compulsion; otherwise it is simply a magically charged but inactive tiny stabby thing. In order to enchant it, another circle is required... or rather several. The system Leander has developed involves a barrier ward surrounding a circle to focus his magic, which surrounds Leander as well as the needle, and then a compulsion-specific circle around the needle. The ritual involves a number of candles, several different material to actually write the runes and circles with, and, of course, a whole lot of effort on Leander's part. Enchanting a needle usually takes 2-3 hours of near-continuous chanting and concentration. Lower-quality needles are finished sooner than high-quality needles.
When the enchantment has taken to the needle, the needle will shimmer with magic and tends to appear shadowed. The shadow-shimmer will remain until the needle has contacted blood and delivered its compulsion or until physically broken (or negated by other magic).
Stage Two: Familiarization
Once Leander has access to a living being, either through a forced compulsion or through his own efforts at charisma and silvertongued persuasion, he can bind their soul to an object. If he used a needle, the object must be of the same base material. The ritual to bind a soul is even more complex and exacting than the process to enchant the needle, and must also combat the target's willpower.
Leander ideally will place the individual within a triple-layered binding circle to restrict movement, awareness, and magic. Also ideally, he will surround his target and himself with protective and focusing wards. These steps are not technically necessary but drastically improve his odds of success... and survival. The anchor object must be in the same circle as the target. These circles can all be prepared ahead of time but must not be physically damaged during entry.
For the ritual itself, Leander must draw binding runes across the target's body - and yes fur interferes with this, as the runes must remain physically intact and continuous in order to function - and across the surface of the anchor, all while chanting. The latter is often exceedingly difficult, as he can only directly command a familiar while the object is in his immediate vicinity, and he is limited by the weight and volume he can feasibly carry; more details will follow. While Leander draws the second set of runes (usually on the anchor, but the order is not critical in a magical sense), the target's soul will begin to soften, so to speak, and become more available to be bound. It is not a particularly pleasant process and is a primary reasons for the binding circles around the target.
Once he has marked the target and the anchor, Leander then injures the target so that the anchor can be completely covered in their blood - another reason to use small objects. If he damages the runes on the target at all during this step, the ritual will fail and the target will generally recognize exactly what the fuck Leander was trying to do to them. As the anchor is coated with blood, the target's soul will stretch and bind to the anchor. No chanting is necessary during this stage.
The instant the anchor has been completely externally coated in the target's blood, the binding will be complete and Leander can begin to apply commands. However, the act of binding is rather traumatic to the soul and the target will generally be extremely, if not unconscious, for an extended period afterwards. It is also extremely exhausting to Leander, with his exhaustion scaling with the difficulty of the bind. A CAUTION: if Leander slips into unconsciousness during the bind and the target is of sufficient awareness and strength, as long as the runes on the anchor are complete then the intended target can push the binding towards Leander instead, turning him into a familiar. Yes, this is basically what Cedar did to him, only to bind herself to him instead of the reverse.
Blacking out while working. Bad idea.
Stage Three: Bound Familiar
More of a plateau than a ritualized spell, while a soul is bound to an anchor of Leander's making he has a considerable degree of power over them. They retain independent mobility and will if he has not given an order that overpowers their willpower. Any order applies a compulsion to comply, and orders can be transmitted telepathically if Leander is currently holding the anchor. Repeated orders stack the strength of the compulsion, and loopholes are a risk when intelligent familiars are involved.
When Leander is holding onto an anchor, he can draw energy from a familiar for his own purposes. He can heal his own body using that energy, or fuel his magic. He can also substitute a familiar for himself, magically speaking, when he is being targeted in any way. When he is not actively holding onto the anchor, his commands are only compulsive when within the range of the familiar's senses. He is also vaguely aware of intentional disobedience on the part of a familiar when either the anchor or the familiar is within a few feet of him.
Leander can always summon a familiar to his side, but if the anchor is not with him his control over them is largely mundane.
Current Familiars
[*]Calis, nightmare stallion [ mini handcuffs on hair braid ] animal; fire generation and above-average speed
[*]Dubhrach, fox/raven shifter [ bone knife ] intelligent; flight and self-shifting; no human form
[/list]
Stage Four: Soul Consumption
Considering the ritual and complexity Leander uses up to this point, the most permanent and most... dramatic of Leander's spellwork seems kind of haphazard. Then again, it's the area he's still working to develop the most, and it will likely be as ritualized and controlled as the rest eventually.
Right now, all of Leander's earlier preparation allows him to simply... embed an anchor into his body while he murders his familiar.
That's it. No enchanted tools to regulate the process. No real wards or circles to fine-tune the magic's accuracy. The anchor reacts with Leander's own blood when coated, binding the soul it already controls to Leander's. Leander already has control over the familiar by this point, so all that's left to do is to destroy the familiar's body and free up that soul to fuel himself.
Consuming a soul provides Leander with the magical strength and life force that the familiar had possessed. If the familiar had any special powers, he can absorb those as well, though at a very low efficiency rate right now: he can take on less than five percent of the ability's strength, and the remainder is permanently lost. It cannot be regained later.
If the anchor is ever removed from Leander's body and completely washed (not just splashed, but actually scrubbed enough to get every trace of blood off), he will lose whatever he has left of the familiar's soul. Magical strength and life force tend to get used up over time, but specific powers stick around and are at the greatest risk for loss in this way.
Currently Absorbed Souls
Mage
Leander is capable of learning general spells and magic, but is strongly inclined to ritual-heavy, circle-based magic. He struggles with making magic unrelated to binding work as intended, and basic spells frequently backfire on him. If it latches onto something and refuses to let go, though, it just makes sense to him and bam. Learned and proficient, as easily as other magic explodes in his face.
Biography: NOTE: spoiler tag contains blood. trigger warning for suicide
Both the Leighton and Octavius families are established and powerful, though in drastically different ways. House Octavius holds master mages, wizards, weavers of spells more specialized than any other single group. The Leightons... well. Their money came from turning rock into beauty, into art. They were miners and smiths and jewelcrafters, masters of jewellery and the delicate intentional magic that went into the most perfect of beautiful amulets.
Leander's immediate family was small, but close-knit. He and his twin sister, Cedar, lived with their parents on a pleasant estate overlooking a lake lined by an enormous opal geode. It was gorgeous and calm, and provided the perfect backdrop for some truly spectacular work by his parents.
Leander hated it. It bred gentleness and his parents encouraged kindness.
And he watched people walk right over his parents. Over. And over. And over. Until his parents had to sell directly to certain parties rather than stand proud and let buyers come grovel for the slightest chance to buy such spectacular works.
That wasn't the worst of it, though. By the time he and Cedar were five, she was clearly following in her parents footsteps, despite clearly wielding more power than either of them could ever hope to have. She was sweet, delicate, and kind - and even as Leander loved her with all of his heart, he couldn't stand how weak she was.
It only grew worse when they entered school. The two were both highly intelligent and already quite well-educated, and their school was definitely for the rich.
Nearly every day, at least one fellow student or a staff member would take advantage of Cedar's kindness in some way. They'd make her run errands without compensation, borrow her belongings, order her around like a pretty little slave. And Cedar just smiled in that honest, amazing way she had, and complied without even a thought of complaining or declining.
If she had confided in him that it was all a façade, he could have put up with it. But it wasn't. He knew her too well, and she was always so sweet and cheerful and honest when she told him how much she loved helping people.
She wasn't helping them. She was being used by them. She was supposed to be strong. She was supposed to be the user, not the used.
He could have hated her, could have just cut her out of his life if she hadn't been so kind to him. There was definitely something special about her. She could often see the solution to something just by looking at it, and Leander knew every shape of every muscle that shifted to make that soft expression. When Leander first came across magic that could bind souls rather than attributes to solid objects, something that seemed far more useful to him than what his parents did together, it was Cedar who helped him catch his first attempted familiar.
The cat escaped, and by the time Cedar had finished binding the scratches on his arm she had found a solution to the problem. She helped him design the earliest form of the binding circles he uses now, and suggested he put the binding runes on the target before the anchor. And then she brought him a lizard, thinking that the cat's fur had also posed a complication, and helped him try again.
It worked. Leander could hold onto that wrought-silver statue his parents had given him for his last birthday and tell the lizard to do whatever the hell he wanted, and it would do it. He didn't even have to say it out loud. And Cedar was so proud of him.
That pride was what kept him going for the next few years. She encouraged him, soft and sweet in her words and expressions and support, in his studies and helped him when his classwork lagged. She laughed when he stayed up all night for two weeks straight and couldn't concentrate in class, but it was always with him, never at him. And he couldn't keep a bad mood when she laughed like that, even if he'd just had a disgusting private chat with his teachers for his distraction. They didn't understand the magic he was working on. They assumed that binding souls was the sort of magic he might learn in his late teens - not before his tenth birthday.
They assumed wrong, and it so undermined their authority that it almost made school tolerable.
And then their parents announced that they had secured a place for Cedar at a far more prestigious school, a place where her already prodigal gem-shaping talents could be honed even more than at home. That school was halfway around the world. A moment's journey, for a family wealthy enough to access a portal network.
Cedar didn't really want to go, but she was too kind to tell anyone that. Leander saw it. He saw the shadow in her eyes, the creasing in her skin. The hesitation and the stiffness in her smile, once radiant but now bravely tragic. She would do it, she would go, but it would be for their parents and not for her.
Leander wanted to keep her from going. He could only protect her if he was near her. Out there, on her own, with him on the other side of the planet, she would be at the mercy of every single person who happened across her. She was too gentle, too sweet, too kind, too weak. He tried to talk his parents out of it, but as usual they dismissed his concerns.
They were so weak they couldn't even see their own weakness, or how they were putting Cedar at risk. They were putting his Cedar at risk. He wouldn't allow it. It was unacceptable.
That night, he devised a plan to bind Cedar so that she couldn't leave. He drew up the spellwork, designed the circles. He drew them, building the new wards into the ones Cedar had helped him with. He couldn't help but touch them and remember those moments, her chatter and how she blushed when her lines wobbled and nearly ruined the runes she had so painstakingly shaped. Leander was better at circle work than she was, even if she was so much smarter.
Cedar agreed to the experiment. Of course she did. She was Cedar. She was gentleness given fragile human form. Sometimes Leander was afraid to hug her for fear of injuring her - or himself, really. Humans were just... so easily damaged. They were armourless and weaponless and brittle like summer twigs in frost.
Leander drew the runes, tiny and delicate and perfect to his eye but still clunky and awkward on Cedar's pale skin. She was always so pale, so fragile... but not for much longer. He would make her stronger.
When he started chanting and spreading his magic through the lines and curves of the circles, something didn't go like he'd expected. The magic didn't bend at he had intended, at least, and he could feel it failing before it ever moved past softening both souls in the room -
and then the magic fell into place, and took hold, and did all the things it was supposed to -
but it was wrong
it was so wrong
he could feel how wrong it was even before he turned
and when he turned
He could still feel her. It was a trick of his mind, of course. She was dead. He could see that, even lying there, his stiff closed hand only an inch from her fingertips. He started to reach for her hand, to pull it against his chest and pretend that everything would be all right, but stopped. He couldn't touch her. He couldn't make this more real.
In time, he had to get up. He knew he couldn't lie there forever. Eventually his parents, their parents, would wake and wonder why the twins hadn't come down for breakfast. There would be school. They would be expected upstairs.
Leander crawled away from his sister's body. He could only move if he didn't look at her, but eventually he managed it.
While he showered, trying numbly to wash the blood from his skin, he found something caught in the thick crust of blood that kept his left hand from opening properly. He bled when he picked it out, and abruptly knew that continuing to wash it was a bad idea.
The feeling was certain but quiet, but it felt so much like one of Cedar's ideas that he instantly shut off the water.
It was a piercing. He brushed the worst of the dried blood off it, revealing a small clear stone. Diamond. Etched. Gorgeous.
Cedar's.
Cedar had made it.
Leander, the cynical, cold, proud child who cared only for himself and his sister, wept. He set the heartbreakingly precious bit of jewellery on the counter and turned the shower back on to hide his tears.
When he went to face his parents, his mask was absolute. He told them Cedar was dead. He let them handle her corpse; she was no longer in it. He weathered their emotionality, their frantic panic and despair. He had already known they were weak.
He went to the funeral and no one expected him to speak. That was just as well; he had pierced his own tongue after studying Cedar's piercing and the magic surrounding it. Wound through it. Bound to it. It would never leave him. And then she would never leave him.
Leander returned to school. He did his work with a vaguer distraction than before, but completed everything more accurately. His teachers were concerned for his mental health, but when he would look straight at them and there was absolutely no grief in his eyes...
well. They learned to leave him alone.
A year after Cedar's physical death, Leander killed his lizard familiar.
It worked, but the statue anchor was too bulky to carry like Cedar's piercing. Eventually his parents found it and scrubbed off the blood, and the lizard's soul vanished.
The family dog was next, and Leander first bound the lazy wolfhound to a much more convenient anchor: a small sewing needle. He played with the suddenly obedient dog for a few days, amused by his control, and then ordered the dog to swim after him as he rowed across the lake. He ordered that dog to swim until it drowned, and drove the needle under the skin of his left arm.
Leander didn't bother telling his parents what had happened to the dog. He cared little for them. He could still use them, though, and it pleased him that they were willing to do just about anything for him. As if gifts would 'help' him. Hah. He indicated his continuing interest in magic, and his mother revealed a family heirloom to support his efforts. He found a mage of somewhat complementary speciality, and had his parents arrange an apprenticeship.
By the time he packed his bags, he was accompanied by a new familiar, and small bumps covered his left forearm. Some of those bumps had grown infected and scarred; others he had learned to sterilize properly first. Dubhrach, an intelligent creature who could shift between fox and raven forms, lent him the appearance of companionship and proved his value to his new mentor.
He would never call him 'master.' There were too many reasons not to; even without Leander's personal problems with the concept, this mage had allowed an intelligent, powerful, valuable familiar escape him half-bound. A familiar with a human form and true magic.
Leander liked that idea, and he already knew he could bind humans. Poor, fragile, delicate humans. He had no desire to be one. He largely ignored his mentor, read through his research and studied his methods, and then moved on after only a few months.
When he casually informed his parents that he needed better, his mother suggested Starlight Academy. At the very least, there were... relatives there. Relatives far more powerful than she.
So be it. Leander would examine this academy, and he would do it with a new pet.
His parents were oh so kind, to bring him powerful new pets to bind simply because he expressed a desire. He needed transportation. They bought him a nightmare stallion. They gushed over the animal's pleasant nature.
Leander didn't care one whit. He took its soul and made it his own, and let Dubhrach struggle to fly bearing the weight of his luggage.
Come, Starlight. Time to prove your worth.
Additional Information:
Age: 15
Birthday: Easter
Gender: Male
Category: Student
Class: High School
Grade: Ten
Appearance Description: Leander really is still a child, but he has recently begun to grow from a soft, innocent-looking ball into a theoretically-eventually elegant stick. He currently stands at about 5'7", but that won't last long. His face would be narrow and bony, a good frame for his almost excessively straight nose, if it weren't for the lingering babyfat still keeping his cheeks company. His eyes are the faded yellow-green of grass that spent all summer under a rotting box without sunlight only to finally be free - for the first frost of autumn. His skin is a bit frosted as well, and tends to seem tinted purple; he is almost always chilled.
It doesn't help that Leander's hair is consistently dyed lavender and streaked with cyan and pink. Yes, it is intended to look like cotton candy. He gave up on getting his hair to not be fluffy and wavy and impossible to work with a while back and now just flaunts it. It's thick and very much does its own thing, and all Leander can control is the technical length of each strand. His bangs are quite long overall, but he braids the left front quarter of his head in front of his ear. That braid is tied off with a silver chain set up like miniature hand cuffs; it is the anchor for one of his favourite familiars.
It's hardly the only metal on his person either. Weak-willed parents are a wonderful thing when it comes to getting legal permission for piercings. His left ear is pierced five times so far - twice on the lobe and three times along the upper outer edge - but all his ear piercings are currently regular earrings. He needs more familiars. His tongue is also pierced - that one he did himself - and the diamond stud in it is definitely enchanted. It's the anchor for his twin's soul and he has no intention of ever taking it out. It is also spectacularly worked, with even the seam between stone and metal seemingly nonexistent. The silver body of the piercing is simple and fluid, curving like water and shimmering slightly, and the diamond itself is perfectly round and smooth but for the delicate etchings of two small asian dragons circling each other across its surface. It was Cedar's last work.
Leander also has a small bone knife that anchors another of his preferred familiars, which is usually kept in a sheath on his hip. His remaining anchors are all embedded in his flesh, strange hard spots and ridges beneath the skin of his left forearm. The distortions are very much visible and often somewhat bruised - and yes, they can get infected if he wasn't careful about cleaning everything before consuming familiar souls - and he almost always wears a glove on that arm. He has a variety of gloves available, but all reach at least to his elbow and are usually single-coloured. If he ever wears a watch (mostly to class), it is on his left wrist and made of metal.
Other than his glove, there is one unenchanted accessory that Leander is rarely without. It is his family's heirloom, a magic relic of considerable power... and everyone thinks it's the diamond-shaped pendant joining the ends of the chain on Leander's brow that holds the power. It isn't. It's there to look pretty and distract people. The chain itself is the real relic, and casually boosts Leander's magic power, focus, and accuracy. The chain is silver with a slight pewter haze that resists polishing, and the pendant is yellow-green bowenite set in a simple silver frame.
When it comes to clothing, Leander is still working out his personal style a bit. For now, he's a fan of heavy, buckle-and-button-laden jackets (his favourite has lace sleeves and an upright collar), black in general, and soft-soled custom-made leather boots that hug him from toe to knee. Leander also likes hats, especially toques, and will wear skeleton-patterned clothing year round, be it a Jack Skellington toque or a stretchy long-sleeved shirt with bony handprints.
Personality Description: you're so cynical, narcissistic cannibal
Leander is confident and prioritizes himself above all else. He works to strengthen himself, goes out of his way to improve his life, and collects money and power of whatever kind he can in order to leave himself on top and everyone else in the dust or under his thumb. He doesn't trust other people, and is quick to divide them into groups: those not worth any attention at all, those he wants under his direct control, and those who currently outpower him. The final group bothers him. He knows he's still young and has a long way to go, but he d o e s n o t w a n t anyone to have power over him.
Sly, confident, and ready with a smirk more than a smile, Leander understands morals and laws but really doesn't care about them. He'll play by the rules when it suits him, and break them when it suits him. He is fully aware of consequences, however, and will definitely moderate his actions with respect to the potential backlash. He's smart, and he has plans. He isn't interested in putting things on hold because he's found himself a place in prison or juvie, and he sure as hell isn't interested in dying.
Ever. See, Leander has two goals. Become more powerful than any other member of his extended clan, and not die. Perhaps it would be better phrased as a goal and a fear. The core of his issues with being under authority or influence is that it puts his survival out of his control and into the hands of someone else.
Even the thought of being under someone else's power actively bothers Leander. He can tolerate pretending to obey others - it's how he got through school so far, and into an apprenticeship that was really just an excuse to read through an established mage's private notes - but actually being bound by someone else's will. That.
That gives him nightmares and drives him into a corner like a rabid rat. He will attack blindly, regardless of who's in front of him, and his sole goal will be to escape by destroying the connection between him and that other person. He has never been driven to this, but then again he is young. People control children differently than adults, and Leander is more than smart enough to work within the child-adult system.
Leander doesn't believe that someone can be both kind and powerful. In his experience, kindness correlates with weakness. His parents were kind, and spineless. His sister was kind, and now the remnants of her life reside on his tongue. He preys on kindness so that he can be more powerful. He has no intention of being truly kind, and he will only throw that illusion around if it convinces someone or something to come into one of his cages. Leander is a liar with a sleek smile and a smooth tongue, and his interest in you is purely selfish.
Powers: Puppet Mage
Stage One: Compulsion
Pricking a living, fleshed being with an enchanted needing induces a compulsion to find Leander. The inducement of the compulsion is by far the simplest part of this step, for the ritual to enchant a needle is... complex.
The needle itself must first be produced by Leander's own hands, or at least scrutinized and learned in detail. The material determines the strength of the inducement; a splinter of wood will be less powerful than pure silver that Leander has forged himself. Leander must chant over the needle as he makes in, and within a working circle that focuses his magic and binds it appropriately. The runes for that circle can vary, but more powerful and complex circles will improve the needle's power.
Once Leander has created a needle, he still has to actually enchant it for the compulsion; otherwise it is simply a magically charged but inactive tiny stabby thing. In order to enchant it, another circle is required... or rather several. The system Leander has developed involves a barrier ward surrounding a circle to focus his magic, which surrounds Leander as well as the needle, and then a compulsion-specific circle around the needle. The ritual involves a number of candles, several different material to actually write the runes and circles with, and, of course, a whole lot of effort on Leander's part. Enchanting a needle usually takes 2-3 hours of near-continuous chanting and concentration. Lower-quality needles are finished sooner than high-quality needles.
When the enchantment has taken to the needle, the needle will shimmer with magic and tends to appear shadowed. The shadow-shimmer will remain until the needle has contacted blood and delivered its compulsion or until physically broken (or negated by other magic).
Stage Two: Familiarization
Once Leander has access to a living being, either through a forced compulsion or through his own efforts at charisma and silvertongued persuasion, he can bind their soul to an object. If he used a needle, the object must be of the same base material. The ritual to bind a soul is even more complex and exacting than the process to enchant the needle, and must also combat the target's willpower.
Leander ideally will place the individual within a triple-layered binding circle to restrict movement, awareness, and magic. Also ideally, he will surround his target and himself with protective and focusing wards. These steps are not technically necessary but drastically improve his odds of success... and survival. The anchor object must be in the same circle as the target. These circles can all be prepared ahead of time but must not be physically damaged during entry.
For the ritual itself, Leander must draw binding runes across the target's body - and yes fur interferes with this, as the runes must remain physically intact and continuous in order to function - and across the surface of the anchor, all while chanting. The latter is often exceedingly difficult, as he can only directly command a familiar while the object is in his immediate vicinity, and he is limited by the weight and volume he can feasibly carry; more details will follow. While Leander draws the second set of runes (usually on the anchor, but the order is not critical in a magical sense), the target's soul will begin to soften, so to speak, and become more available to be bound. It is not a particularly pleasant process and is a primary reasons for the binding circles around the target.
Once he has marked the target and the anchor, Leander then injures the target so that the anchor can be completely covered in their blood - another reason to use small objects. If he damages the runes on the target at all during this step, the ritual will fail and the target will generally recognize exactly what the fuck Leander was trying to do to them. As the anchor is coated with blood, the target's soul will stretch and bind to the anchor. No chanting is necessary during this stage.
The instant the anchor has been completely externally coated in the target's blood, the binding will be complete and Leander can begin to apply commands. However, the act of binding is rather traumatic to the soul and the target will generally be extremely, if not unconscious, for an extended period afterwards. It is also extremely exhausting to Leander, with his exhaustion scaling with the difficulty of the bind. A CAUTION: if Leander slips into unconsciousness during the bind and the target is of sufficient awareness and strength, as long as the runes on the anchor are complete then the intended target can push the binding towards Leander instead, turning him into a familiar. Yes, this is basically what Cedar did to him, only to bind herself to him instead of the reverse.
Blacking out while working. Bad idea.
Stage Three: Bound Familiar
More of a plateau than a ritualized spell, while a soul is bound to an anchor of Leander's making he has a considerable degree of power over them. They retain independent mobility and will if he has not given an order that overpowers their willpower. Any order applies a compulsion to comply, and orders can be transmitted telepathically if Leander is currently holding the anchor. Repeated orders stack the strength of the compulsion, and loopholes are a risk when intelligent familiars are involved.
When Leander is holding onto an anchor, he can draw energy from a familiar for his own purposes. He can heal his own body using that energy, or fuel his magic. He can also substitute a familiar for himself, magically speaking, when he is being targeted in any way. When he is not actively holding onto the anchor, his commands are only compulsive when within the range of the familiar's senses. He is also vaguely aware of intentional disobedience on the part of a familiar when either the anchor or the familiar is within a few feet of him.
Leander can always summon a familiar to his side, but if the anchor is not with him his control over them is largely mundane.
Current Familiars
[*]Calis, nightmare stallion [ mini handcuffs on hair braid ] animal; fire generation and above-average speed
[*]Dubhrach, fox/raven shifter [ bone knife ] intelligent; flight and self-shifting; no human form
[/list]
Stage Four: Soul Consumption
Considering the ritual and complexity Leander uses up to this point, the most permanent and most... dramatic of Leander's spellwork seems kind of haphazard. Then again, it's the area he's still working to develop the most, and it will likely be as ritualized and controlled as the rest eventually.
Right now, all of Leander's earlier preparation allows him to simply... embed an anchor into his body while he murders his familiar.
That's it. No enchanted tools to regulate the process. No real wards or circles to fine-tune the magic's accuracy. The anchor reacts with Leander's own blood when coated, binding the soul it already controls to Leander's. Leander already has control over the familiar by this point, so all that's left to do is to destroy the familiar's body and free up that soul to fuel himself.
Consuming a soul provides Leander with the magical strength and life force that the familiar had possessed. If the familiar had any special powers, he can absorb those as well, though at a very low efficiency rate right now: he can take on less than five percent of the ability's strength, and the remainder is permanently lost. It cannot be regained later.
If the anchor is ever removed from Leander's body and completely washed (not just splashed, but actually scrubbed enough to get every trace of blood off), he will lose whatever he has left of the familiar's soul. Magical strength and life force tend to get used up over time, but specific powers stick around and are at the greatest risk for loss in this way.
Currently Absorbed Souls
- Cedar Lavender Leighton-Octavius, twin sister [ diamond tongue piercing ] magic regeneration and mild magical flaw perception
- Sinna, wolfhound [ sewing needle embedded in his left forearm ] life force
- assorted small animals [ assorted fragments of rock and bone embedded in his left forearm ] life force
Mage
Leander is capable of learning general spells and magic, but is strongly inclined to ritual-heavy, circle-based magic. He struggles with making magic unrelated to binding work as intended, and basic spells frequently backfire on him. If it latches onto something and refuses to let go, though, it just makes sense to him and bam. Learned and proficient, as easily as other magic explodes in his face.
Biography: NOTE: spoiler tag contains blood. trigger warning for suicide
Both the Leighton and Octavius families are established and powerful, though in drastically different ways. House Octavius holds master mages, wizards, weavers of spells more specialized than any other single group. The Leightons... well. Their money came from turning rock into beauty, into art. They were miners and smiths and jewelcrafters, masters of jewellery and the delicate intentional magic that went into the most perfect of beautiful amulets.
Leander's immediate family was small, but close-knit. He and his twin sister, Cedar, lived with their parents on a pleasant estate overlooking a lake lined by an enormous opal geode. It was gorgeous and calm, and provided the perfect backdrop for some truly spectacular work by his parents.
Leander hated it. It bred gentleness and his parents encouraged kindness.
And he watched people walk right over his parents. Over. And over. And over. Until his parents had to sell directly to certain parties rather than stand proud and let buyers come grovel for the slightest chance to buy such spectacular works.
That wasn't the worst of it, though. By the time he and Cedar were five, she was clearly following in her parents footsteps, despite clearly wielding more power than either of them could ever hope to have. She was sweet, delicate, and kind - and even as Leander loved her with all of his heart, he couldn't stand how weak she was.
It only grew worse when they entered school. The two were both highly intelligent and already quite well-educated, and their school was definitely for the rich.
Nearly every day, at least one fellow student or a staff member would take advantage of Cedar's kindness in some way. They'd make her run errands without compensation, borrow her belongings, order her around like a pretty little slave. And Cedar just smiled in that honest, amazing way she had, and complied without even a thought of complaining or declining.
If she had confided in him that it was all a façade, he could have put up with it. But it wasn't. He knew her too well, and she was always so sweet and cheerful and honest when she told him how much she loved helping people.
She wasn't helping them. She was being used by them. She was supposed to be strong. She was supposed to be the user, not the used.
He could have hated her, could have just cut her out of his life if she hadn't been so kind to him. There was definitely something special about her. She could often see the solution to something just by looking at it, and Leander knew every shape of every muscle that shifted to make that soft expression. When Leander first came across magic that could bind souls rather than attributes to solid objects, something that seemed far more useful to him than what his parents did together, it was Cedar who helped him catch his first attempted familiar.
The cat escaped, and by the time Cedar had finished binding the scratches on his arm she had found a solution to the problem. She helped him design the earliest form of the binding circles he uses now, and suggested he put the binding runes on the target before the anchor. And then she brought him a lizard, thinking that the cat's fur had also posed a complication, and helped him try again.
It worked. Leander could hold onto that wrought-silver statue his parents had given him for his last birthday and tell the lizard to do whatever the hell he wanted, and it would do it. He didn't even have to say it out loud. And Cedar was so proud of him.
That pride was what kept him going for the next few years. She encouraged him, soft and sweet in her words and expressions and support, in his studies and helped him when his classwork lagged. She laughed when he stayed up all night for two weeks straight and couldn't concentrate in class, but it was always with him, never at him. And he couldn't keep a bad mood when she laughed like that, even if he'd just had a disgusting private chat with his teachers for his distraction. They didn't understand the magic he was working on. They assumed that binding souls was the sort of magic he might learn in his late teens - not before his tenth birthday.
They assumed wrong, and it so undermined their authority that it almost made school tolerable.
And then their parents announced that they had secured a place for Cedar at a far more prestigious school, a place where her already prodigal gem-shaping talents could be honed even more than at home. That school was halfway around the world. A moment's journey, for a family wealthy enough to access a portal network.
Cedar didn't really want to go, but she was too kind to tell anyone that. Leander saw it. He saw the shadow in her eyes, the creasing in her skin. The hesitation and the stiffness in her smile, once radiant but now bravely tragic. She would do it, she would go, but it would be for their parents and not for her.
Leander wanted to keep her from going. He could only protect her if he was near her. Out there, on her own, with him on the other side of the planet, she would be at the mercy of every single person who happened across her. She was too gentle, too sweet, too kind, too weak. He tried to talk his parents out of it, but as usual they dismissed his concerns.
They were so weak they couldn't even see their own weakness, or how they were putting Cedar at risk. They were putting his Cedar at risk. He wouldn't allow it. It was unacceptable.
That night, he devised a plan to bind Cedar so that she couldn't leave. He drew up the spellwork, designed the circles. He drew them, building the new wards into the ones Cedar had helped him with. He couldn't help but touch them and remember those moments, her chatter and how she blushed when her lines wobbled and nearly ruined the runes she had so painstakingly shaped. Leander was better at circle work than she was, even if she was so much smarter.
Cedar agreed to the experiment. Of course she did. She was Cedar. She was gentleness given fragile human form. Sometimes Leander was afraid to hug her for fear of injuring her - or himself, really. Humans were just... so easily damaged. They were armourless and weaponless and brittle like summer twigs in frost.
Leander drew the runes, tiny and delicate and perfect to his eye but still clunky and awkward on Cedar's pale skin. She was always so pale, so fragile... but not for much longer. He would make her stronger.
When he started chanting and spreading his magic through the lines and curves of the circles, something didn't go like he'd expected. The magic didn't bend at he had intended, at least, and he could feel it failing before it ever moved past softening both souls in the room -
and then the magic fell into place, and took hold, and did all the things it was supposed to -
but it was wrong
it was so wrong
he could feel how wrong it was even before he turned
and when he turned
h e s a w h e r
s h e w a s c o v e r e d i n h e r o w n b l o o d he knew it before he saw it welling from her wrist as she extended a hand towards him
how could he not go to her
how could he deny her anything
how could he stop her from pressing that knife into his hand blade-first, and clasping his fist before sagging to the ground
how could he
how could he let her
how could she
When Leander regained consciousness, he was facedown on the floor of his workroom. His hand ached and he was cold.
So cold, and his skin stuck to the floor when he tried to move. The thought that he had just crashed after working too hard vanished, still half-formed, when he saw that it was half-dried blood gluing him down.
There was a lot of blood, and he wasn't nearly light headed enough for it all to be his. Not by a long shot.
And then he saw her. If he hadn't already been lying on the ground, he would have fallen there between heartbeats - but then, his heart faltered there, and the space between heartbeats was dangerously long.
He just stared. For a long time, all he could do was stare. The curve of her neck, streaked with a dragged fingerprint, flecking and dry on the fine hairs. Her outstretched hand, palm down, fingers limp and stiff and colder than they had ever been. The colour was wrong. So pale... bruised at the base of the nails. Her hair covered her face, clumped and crusted with old blood. He could see enough of her face, though.
Even dead, she was still gentle. Even dead, soulless, empty, a beautiful tattered corpse, he could still see her love for him.
s h e w a s c o v e r e d i n h e r o w n b l o o d he knew it before he saw it welling from her wrist as she extended a hand towards him
how could he not go to her
how could he deny her anything
how could he stop her from pressing that knife into his hand blade-first, and clasping his fist before sagging to the ground
how could he
how could he let her
how could she
When Leander regained consciousness, he was facedown on the floor of his workroom. His hand ached and he was cold.
So cold, and his skin stuck to the floor when he tried to move. The thought that he had just crashed after working too hard vanished, still half-formed, when he saw that it was half-dried blood gluing him down.
There was a lot of blood, and he wasn't nearly light headed enough for it all to be his. Not by a long shot.
And then he saw her. If he hadn't already been lying on the ground, he would have fallen there between heartbeats - but then, his heart faltered there, and the space between heartbeats was dangerously long.
He just stared. For a long time, all he could do was stare. The curve of her neck, streaked with a dragged fingerprint, flecking and dry on the fine hairs. Her outstretched hand, palm down, fingers limp and stiff and colder than they had ever been. The colour was wrong. So pale... bruised at the base of the nails. Her hair covered her face, clumped and crusted with old blood. He could see enough of her face, though.
Even dead, she was still gentle. Even dead, soulless, empty, a beautiful tattered corpse, he could still see her love for him.
He could still feel her. It was a trick of his mind, of course. She was dead. He could see that, even lying there, his stiff closed hand only an inch from her fingertips. He started to reach for her hand, to pull it against his chest and pretend that everything would be all right, but stopped. He couldn't touch her. He couldn't make this more real.
In time, he had to get up. He knew he couldn't lie there forever. Eventually his parents, their parents, would wake and wonder why the twins hadn't come down for breakfast. There would be school. They would be expected upstairs.
Leander crawled away from his sister's body. He could only move if he didn't look at her, but eventually he managed it.
While he showered, trying numbly to wash the blood from his skin, he found something caught in the thick crust of blood that kept his left hand from opening properly. He bled when he picked it out, and abruptly knew that continuing to wash it was a bad idea.
The feeling was certain but quiet, but it felt so much like one of Cedar's ideas that he instantly shut off the water.
It was a piercing. He brushed the worst of the dried blood off it, revealing a small clear stone. Diamond. Etched. Gorgeous.
Cedar's.
Cedar had made it.
Leander, the cynical, cold, proud child who cared only for himself and his sister, wept. He set the heartbreakingly precious bit of jewellery on the counter and turned the shower back on to hide his tears.
When he went to face his parents, his mask was absolute. He told them Cedar was dead. He let them handle her corpse; she was no longer in it. He weathered their emotionality, their frantic panic and despair. He had already known they were weak.
He went to the funeral and no one expected him to speak. That was just as well; he had pierced his own tongue after studying Cedar's piercing and the magic surrounding it. Wound through it. Bound to it. It would never leave him. And then she would never leave him.
Leander returned to school. He did his work with a vaguer distraction than before, but completed everything more accurately. His teachers were concerned for his mental health, but when he would look straight at them and there was absolutely no grief in his eyes...
well. They learned to leave him alone.
A year after Cedar's physical death, Leander killed his lizard familiar.
It worked, but the statue anchor was too bulky to carry like Cedar's piercing. Eventually his parents found it and scrubbed off the blood, and the lizard's soul vanished.
The family dog was next, and Leander first bound the lazy wolfhound to a much more convenient anchor: a small sewing needle. He played with the suddenly obedient dog for a few days, amused by his control, and then ordered the dog to swim after him as he rowed across the lake. He ordered that dog to swim until it drowned, and drove the needle under the skin of his left arm.
Leander didn't bother telling his parents what had happened to the dog. He cared little for them. He could still use them, though, and it pleased him that they were willing to do just about anything for him. As if gifts would 'help' him. Hah. He indicated his continuing interest in magic, and his mother revealed a family heirloom to support his efforts. He found a mage of somewhat complementary speciality, and had his parents arrange an apprenticeship.
By the time he packed his bags, he was accompanied by a new familiar, and small bumps covered his left forearm. Some of those bumps had grown infected and scarred; others he had learned to sterilize properly first. Dubhrach, an intelligent creature who could shift between fox and raven forms, lent him the appearance of companionship and proved his value to his new mentor.
He would never call him 'master.' There were too many reasons not to; even without Leander's personal problems with the concept, this mage had allowed an intelligent, powerful, valuable familiar escape him half-bound. A familiar with a human form and true magic.
Leander liked that idea, and he already knew he could bind humans. Poor, fragile, delicate humans. He had no desire to be one. He largely ignored his mentor, read through his research and studied his methods, and then moved on after only a few months.
When he casually informed his parents that he needed better, his mother suggested Starlight Academy. At the very least, there were... relatives there. Relatives far more powerful than she.
So be it. Leander would examine this academy, and he would do it with a new pet.
His parents were oh so kind, to bring him powerful new pets to bind simply because he expressed a desire. He needed transportation. They bought him a nightmare stallion. They gushed over the animal's pleasant nature.
Leander didn't care one whit. He took its soul and made it his own, and let Dubhrach struggle to fly bearing the weight of his luggage.
Come, Starlight. Time to prove your worth.
Additional Information:
