Private Down on the Corner...

It was just an ordinary morning until the corner hounds came for her.

Ever since she’d made her deal with Alt, all sorts of strange things had been happening to her. She liked to think that it was because of that, but in reality, she’d made some warlocks upset a few weeks ago, and the recent attacks had probably been their retaliation. It was mostly small stuff, and never at the school, but when she left, she had to keep her guard up.

She was out for a jog on one of the hiking trails at Oceania Park, in one of the more obscure nooks that she liked to visit. She hadn’t seen another person in, like, twenty minutes. Her hair was up in a bun, and she was lacking her trademark pointed hat, an oddity for her. She wore a pair of gray athletics shorts with a white jersey that said “The Wizards, #23.” She hoped MJ wouldn’t be insulted by her purchasing of the jersey for a stupid joke.

She didn’t like to leave the school unarmed, but she’d been a bit naive, assuming that nothing would happen somewhere so public. She had been wrong.

As she passed by a small pavilion, she stopped to catch her breath, leaning against a picnic table, her hands on her sides. There was a small pond near the pavilion, remarkably clear, and calm enough that you could see your reflection in it. Curious, she strode towards it, kneeling down to peer into the water. She was lucky she did, because her reflection gave her the only warning she would have gotten.

From a corner of one of the pavilion’s support beams, a creature emerged, seeming to squeeze right through it as easily as if it were walking through a doorway. It looked like… Well, let’s just say she understood the reason that Frank Long never described what they looked like. You could call it a “hound,” and that would kind of get the impression across. She didn’t really have time to ogle herself, because it was already running the instant it stepped through the corner.

She moved quickly, acting without thinking. It was hard to think when something that big and that scary looking was hoping to make you its dinner. She leapt towards the pond, twisting in the air, and held up a hand, shouting an incantation. A lance of flame burst forth from her hand, just as the beast’s teeth began to close around it.

Gods, this thing was fast.

If it wasn’t nice to look at before, it certainly hadn’t improved now. As she flew back into the water, the beast’s flesh(?) bubbled and burst, as she roasted it alive from within, all while it chewed on her wrist like she was a squeaky toy. She crashed into the water, covered in the pulpy, charred remains of the hound, its head still halfheartedly chewing on her hand.

She burst through the surface of the water, coughing and sputtering, and came to the shore quickly, shaking off the head of the beast and looking at her hand. It hadn’t been trying to rip her arm off, which was her only saving grace. Her wrist had been torn up pretty badly, and her little dip in the pond meant that it was probably gonna get infected now. Great.
”Thunderation!” She cried in frustration, setting to work on her hand, sitting cross-legged. She worked a healing spell, cursing with old timey words like “‘snails” and “fuck,” and the wound began to knit itself shut, but it was slow going, mostly because she didn’t want to waste one of her better spells.

Tilly did a double take in the direction that the voice originated from, and nearly sent a fireball in that direction on sheer impulse. She glanced up at the tired-looking woman, offering her a sandwich, and she could only wonder how much those world-weary eyes had seen, that something like this seemed commonplace.

”You have no idea.” Tilly groaned, taking the sandwich. This wasn’t the first of these things that had attacked her, though this was definitely the scariest attack they’d made on her. She patted a spot on the ground beside her, gesturing for the stranger to sit. ”What about you?” She asked. She wouldn’t have said it for fear of sounding rude, but she looked like her day had gone even worse.

She took a bite out of her sandwich, examining her arm, which was slowly healing. The many-toothed maw of the corner hound had left her arm riddled with small abrasions. Thankfully, the teeth, designed for ripping and tearing, hadn’t had a chance to do their worst.

”Vancian.” Tilly explained, glancing at the stranger curiously. It wasn’t rare to come across a magic user in this place, not like how it was out in the rest of the world, but she still rarely found others like her out and about in public. ”My healing spell isn’t really a healing spell, either. I’m just speeding up the timestream and letting my hand heal itself.” She said, a bit sheepishly. She wasn’t great at actual healing magic, so this loophole had been her go-to for as long as she could remember.

”Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to sound rude.” She said nonchalantly, glancing back at the charred head of the beast, which was still halfheartedly attempting to drag itself in her direction using one of the folds of its three-mawed mouth, and sighed. ”I dunno. Someone doesn’t like me, I guess. This is like the third time this week.” She said, pointing a finger at the dismembered head. It erupted into flames, and, incredibly quickly, smoldered down to ash.

”I think these are Hounds of Tindalos. Like, from Weird Tales, March 1929.” She wondered aloud. Her grandma was a collector of books, so of course Tilly had poured over everything in her collection during her time there, and her eidetic memory made recalling such things mundane. ”I don’t suppose you’re the one who cursed me?” She asked plainy, half-joking. Only half-joking, because she’d been hanging out with Caissa a lot lately, and that seemed like something the demoness would actually do.

Tilly was perhaps one of the easiest people in the world to flatter. Her pride was perhaps one of her most defining attributes, and there was nothing she was quite as proud of as her magic. Not many people appreciated her particular school of magic, long-forgotten by most practitioners, cast away in favor of more easily attainable power. For someone like Tilly, an abnormality who didn’t possess a drop of innate magical ability, the art was the only way that she could practice magic at all.
”Oh, thank you!” She smiled, some of the color returning to her face. ”It’s rare to come across someone with an appreciation for the craft.”

When the two of them moved in unison, producing nearly the same spell and reducing what remained of the hound to a smouldering pile of ash, Tilly grinned. Pyromancy was her favored combative magic, and seeing someone else with an appreciation for it was nice. ”That could have been a scene in an action movie.” She beamed, blowing on the tip of her finger as if it were a revolver in an old western.

She frowned as the stranger explained her loss of magic. She knew that pain, having fought for so long to have any magic to begin with. She couldn’t imagine losing it all after all she’d worked to achieve this. When she looked at her, her magical senses only had one reaction: A warning of searing pain, of heat beyond imaging, of endless flame. She was used to people walking around with really scary vibes, so she tended to tune them out unless she was actively focusing, but this girl’s was palpable.

”No magic at all?” She asked, sympathy in her voice. ”Thunderation, I’m sorry. Your pyromancy is amazing, though. Light years ahead of mine.”

Wow. No soul to speak of. She couldn’t, like, read soul energy or anything like that, but her explanation filled in some of the blanks left by her magical senses. She stared thoughtfully at Adelaida, intrigued by the unique energy she put off.
”No soul at all? Are you still, like, the same as you were without one?” She asked, unable to stop herself. Philosophical dilemmas were a favorite pastime of hers. ”Not that it would give your life any less value, but like… Do you feel any different?”

Really hard-hitting questions to a stranger whose name she didn’t even know.

”Oh yeah.” She said dumbly. ”I’m Tilly, by the way.”

She finished the sandwich, wiping the crumbs from her hands and standing up. ”No idea at all.” She lied. It was obvious that she knew something she wasn’t letting on. ”Probably some dude I turned down for a prom date. I thought about going to the police, but there’s not much they could really do.” She said, also omitting part of the truth. She wasn’t entirely sure what Caissa and Mal were up to, but now that she worked so closely with the former, she was nervous about law enforcement in general.