❝It’s worked for me only some of the time.❞ She giggles, recalling all of the times that it didn’t.

Sure, she could have signed out her books and read them all at whatever apartment she was staying in for that month... But she would always be tempted to do something else.

To bake a pie. To turn her attention to lacrima vision, when her mind got too loud, and she was aching for a distraction. To bathe for an hour.

Home, however loose the term, was a place with a lot of distractions.

Sometimes, the library is simply the more obviously reasonable option─on those days when she’s particularly determined to do nothing but study. 

But then she’s faced with the inevitable overwhelm. There are too many books, too many topics, too many things that she might forget so maybe it’s best if she just... Reaches for them.

❝Unfortunately,❞ she finishes highlighting one of her bullet-points, and looks up at Sherry. ❝I find myself repeating the same mistake each time I do. I’ll be looking for a specific book, and come out with four. Because, you know! You just find treasures along the way. I know I’d dodge a lot of that if I’d just ask the librarian to guide me, but... Finding them’s half the fun.❞

Mary removes her gale-force glasses, and sets them next to her tea cup. 

❝And it’s worse in a town I’ve never been to before. You always find new things on the same subject, by another author that you’ve never heard of... I can’t resist, but I also can’t keep up with everything n’ actually get somewhere.❞ She admits, tapping her fingers against the table’s surface.

Reading in Lamia’s guild hall hadn’t been the worst. Mary had always been a creature of adaptation. So, however noisy the guild’s members could get... It was an okay price to pay. Mary could still focus through it. The real problem, though she would not admit it, was that she was having trouble understanding some of the schematics of the material she was currently researching: archival magic. But alas, it is a lost magic, technically─and those are never easy to grasp without all of the right tools. She’d learned to tune it out. In any case, technically she isn’t free to just go to the library, even if she’d wanted to.

She raises an eyebrow, and leans forward a bit.

❝... Are you hinting that you’d like to go there right now?❞

Mary’s resting her face atop her hands, laying on her tummy as she reads over her notes.

Magical theory was an interest subject, when it didn’t require for her to do mental cartwheels and to work backwards. Not that it’s ever been particularly tough, either─perhaps her focus just isn’t all there anymore due to mental exhaustion. And at that point, she wasn’t going to get anywhere.

She pushes herself off the bed as she shuts her books closed, and gets up to leave them atop the dresser. And while she’s at it, Mary turns on the music lacrima ( she’d been pleased to find old records of Bosconian artists at the library ). And thus, she did not hear the jingle of keys, or the sound of the door opening when Jackie returned.

Admittedly, she is startled as Jackie pops in by the threshold, and she turns her head so quickly that she swears she felt a bone crack. She doesn’t have much time to think about it though.

She smiles at her friend as she rambles, and steps closer to inspect what ridiculous, Valentine’s-themed treat she found. ❝Of course you did...❞ She starts, reaching back to untie her buns, letting her now-curled locks cascade over her shoulders. She shakes her hair about with one hand, never taking her eyes off what her friend has brought.

Her eyes light up. ❝Ooh, Jackie, those are so freakin’ cute! Who gives a shit if they’re a little fucked up? ─Is that raspberry soda?❞ She leans forward to inspect the label closer, but quickly loses interest, because she would much rather be putting her shoes on. So that’s exactly what she does.

❝Fuck yeah we’re goin’! Ooh, y’know what I’m gonna get for us? That warm white chocolate brownie, with the vanilla scoop on top.❞ She adds with a note of excitement.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

The odds are against them for now. Her limbs are burning, and perhaps it’s from the scrapes, or maybe from the ceaseless weaving around projectiles─and whenever she’d made the mistake of thinking she could stop to catch her breath, she has to pivot again.

And the fact that she and Taliyah have less-than-average coordination with the others ( because they’d never fought alongside anyone aside from their team, gods be damned ) is doing little to help them.

The voidlings haven’t all been completely obliterated, but now the infestation had been contained.

If Abaddon had to guess, she’d say there were twenty─maybe twenty-five small ones left. Disgusting, multi-legged things, rattling at a deafening frequency the moment they were sliced through.

A chorus of it, for what seemed like hours.

How many minutes has it been, anyway? Ten? Fifteen? It couldn’t have been that long.

The putrid scent of the sewers nearby where the space-tear had burst open could barely be perceived anymore, over the acidic scent of the void creatures twisting as they were struck dead.

They melt. The things rattle again, and then quiet.

Roughly twenty of those rotten things left, and then the two large ones, still being kept at a distance if only because they’d been cowering behind their army of spider-like beasts ( which were maybe an eighth of their size ).

Abaddon grips tightly at her rope, the spearheads at either end dangling just above the concrete. The neon rope is weaved once around each wrist, and she inhales deeply once more.

The others had started shooting again; and with Soraka right behind them, Ezreal’s closing in on one of the larger void-creatures: the crab-like monstrosity & what they called the sun-eater─ that now stood nearly bare in its path as the last of its voidlings fell and dissolved to smoke.

Abaddon starts swinging one side of her rope, then flings it at one voidling, but her focus shifts. A second swing, and the spearhead ( now piercing the spiderling ) changes direction swiftly. Three more voidlings are whiplashed─by the former’s corpse. 

Those three seconds should not have been gambled with.

She should not have paused that long, should not have turned her back. There were two brood mothers among them. The shelled beast charged at her, completely disregarding Taliyah. 

As she turns, she’s met face-to-face with the crab. There’s little time to react, and all she can do is put her hands in front of herself. Her ribs ache, and she bites back a cry as she reaches for one of the creature’s horns following its initial, crushing blow. Then, the other.

Abaddon waits one, two seconds. She can feel the soles of her feet become hot as she’s head-butted several yards back, causing her feet to drag. But she holds on for dear life, because she cannot let the fucking thing go. Not unless she’s trying to get winded, or worse.

It comes to a sudden halt, and with the velocity… Her fingers slip ( why the FUCK does the First Star go with silk gloves? ). She loses her grip on the thing’s horns, and while she’s launched backward, one hand tugs at her rope; the other finds the spearhead. Teeth gritting, Abaddon swings her arm, and slings the blade at the beast, aiming for its skull.

The monstrosity opens its mouth and its jaws unhinge to snap at the projectile. It bites down on it, and pulls, dragging Abaddon forward. Her eyes widen─the beast caught her off-guard, and panic sets in. Letting go of her weapon was the first thing she did, except the rope was weaved around her wrists, her forearms. 

After all, she is Mary before she is Abaddon - she has to find herself; the real girl who’s scared & angry at the universe─because she’d been FINE before the First Star took away her normalcy. She was perfectly happy just being mundane.

( No wonder Jinx was always a wild-card. She’d been angry, too. Had been right to BE angry. )

She clumsily struggles to get loose from her own restraints, and finally, she does. The novice braces herself to hit the ground─she will only be suspended in the air for a moment.

From the corner of her eye, she catches a blinding beam, and her head turns forcefully to look in the direction of the one they called sun-eater. 

She’s seen that thing hit before, the way it sears everything in its path. The last time, Quinn had taken a blow, but the stardust imbedded into her uniform is what saved her from a nastier burn. That had only been momentary contact.

This beam is going straight for her. Her teeth grind. She’ll live, she’s sure of it. The sounds of the other Star Guardians have been tuned out, screaming… Something at her. 

She hits the ground, and tumbles a few yards; but the beast’s beacon fires at her, trails behind her body, searing the concrete in its path as it follows her movement. Her body eventually stops rolling.

She has barely a second to panic, because it’s coming straight for her head.

No defenses, no starlight to keep her safe.

Her body tenses up completely. A shift of light, a blink later─and a pale shade eclipses the beam for her. 

Abaddon’s ears are ringing, maybe from her own screaming, though she can’t hear his name fall from her lips. Everything is loud.

She gets up, because suddenly her bruises & bloodied skin don’t ache, and Ezreal falls. She catches him, but doesn’t dare to look away from the monster.

Soraka screams something at her. She doesn’t process it. The other raises her staff, and she dispels the sun-eater’s beam. 

She understand the cue now. Abaddon looks down at Ezreal in her arms. Bleeding, tense, but he’s still awake. His face is red ( how could it not be? His chest is burnt ). As Soraka draws near, she hands him off to her─painfully, because he should be her responsibility now.

At some point, during those few moments, the light-bender & the marksman had taken care of the shelled one. Abaddon sprints forth, swinging her hand low to sweep up her weapon once more, before Taliyah’s wall closes off the sun-eater’s path.

In a blind rage, Abaddon cries out, swinging the spearhead at the creature’s eye once more, and her vision is too blurry with tears to see clearly.

But she cannot mistake the sound of Taliyah willing gravity to be disturbed beneath the beast.

It is propelled forward─perfect for two blades to dig their way into its skull. They strike.

The novice grips her weapon by its rope, and both girls turn to sprint back to Ezreal and Soraka. She kneels at his side─dropping her weapon behind her in the process. However, the weapon shifts, and her familiar lands beside her.

❝I’m sorry─I’m so sorry,❞ she stammers, and her hands come up shakily to her face. She wipes her tears, quickly, but her trembling fingers find his hands soon enough.

❝Thank you─don’t ever do that again. Please.❞ Naturally, her digits find his pulse, because his eyes are closed & he’s not responding, and that makes her extremely uncomfortable.

His pulse is there. He is alive.

She exhales deeply, a little easier, though her shoulders jerk from her own sobbing. She wants to curse at him. Badly.

But she cannot bring herself to do such a thing; not when he could have died from preventing what would have been certain death for her. 

❝I’m sorry,❞ she offers again─a whisper, directed at Soraka this time.

Her brows raise in awe as she stands there, awkwardly holding a box of pastries. Not that she’s by any means surprised that Sherry does, in fact, have quite a list to get through, but that’s... Overkill.

What really got her was the part where she added, casually, that she has still more to go. One might ask Sherry why she would task herself with something so lengthy and not request help ONCE. But Mary, being the type of person who would find something like gift-wrapping a very personal touch, assumes that’s the reason for it. That, or Sherry is simply a little too self-reliant.

❝Stars, Sherry─❞ Still... Over a hundred-forty gifts? ❝How? And have you ever considered keeping a small circle?❞ She jests, coming closer to her. ❝... In any case, let me know if you want help with that. I'm sure you chose to do it yourself for a reason, but... For real, that’s insane. ─Oh! The real reason I came here, by the way! Do you want a pastry? Here. Have one.❞ She suggests, opening the box up for Sherry to see the variety.