Hidden away within the confines of a small cabin, a young ‘human’ male by the name of Methaeus sat at a half-cluttered desk, hunched over the yellowed and partially unwritten pages of a leather-bound tome he always kept tucked into the folds of his clothing. The end of a pure white quill trembled to and fro as he scrawled diligently away on the old pages, recording various notes he’d neglected to take the previous day. When he had a moment, this was what the Chaos Weaver did; write down last little nothings he hadn't the time to jot down before.

At this time, he was recording what things he learned from the shadows in the surrounding plain, having asked those of the trees scattered about, and even of the grasses when he had the chance. They had told him intriguing things, like a little bit of the land's history and the resident fauna, as well as the usual climate for the entire year, and how frequently souls and masses of spirit passed through.

Mid-way through his last sentence, he finally noticed the stray spark of chaos that had been lashing up his quill for the past five minutes. Lionesque eyes of blood and ocean flicked over towards it, focusing on the end of the quill, before following the gnarled black thread. Methaeus frowned, watching carefully, until it began to trail along his wrist, and then up his arm, at which point he rather suddenly felt extremely nauseous. He thrust his quill down on the desk, lurching from his seat with such force that it tumbled over with a heavy clatter, and threw himself around, about to hurry out, before his legs gave out and he collapsed, trying to catch himself on the desk, only to pull papers, a weight, and ink vials down with him. As one of the aforementioned vials struck his head, he cringed, pushing himself up on his hands, and turned to crawl away, travelling no farther than a yard before his stomach heaved, and he vomited somewhat violently.

As Methaeus felt his stomach begin to settle, he convulsed with a few coughs, sluggishly lifting his head, before turning, trying feebly to lift himself to his feet. He pulled on the overturned chair in an attempt to assist himself in the task, eventually supporting himself on the edge of the desk, where he paused, breathing in slow and shakily. He was trembling all over, worse than a small animal left out in the rain for too many hours, and his breathing was loudly laborious; he could feel a faint residue of sweat along his brow, while his nose began to gather the faint trace of a smell it shouldn’t have.

He smelled blood. Rubbing his forehead with a quivering hand, he slowly opened his eyes, glancing down first at the ends of his hair, which seemed oddly moist, then at the papers he'd strewn along the floor, before sliding his gaze up further towards the door, where they paused on a large, blurry blotch of red on the wooden planks. He stared blankly at it a moment, his mind gone sluggish in registering information, before he finally realized the color, and blinked in effort to clear his vision. “What…? Lords… I pray that isn’t what I think it…” His weak tenor voice trailed off as his vision cleared, and his countenance went agape.

He was staring at a huge puddle of blood.

Trembling getting ever worse, he gripped the edge of his desk as tightly as his fingers would allow, lionesque eyes so wide one could see the whites around his irises, and in one stumbling motion, shoved himself hastily out of the room. He hurried down the hall as fast as his unsteady legs would allow, yanking off his cowl and his robes along the way, and left himself in just the shirt and slacks he wore underneath as he tossed the other garments aside, before bursting out the door moments later, leaving a strange trail of shadowy mist in his wake.

Every few steps, he stumbled, and every few stumbles he lost a little bit of his human appearance. By the time he began to approach a small thicket of trees, he was no longer a deep red-haired human, but a large, dark, demi-human mixture of lion, dragon, and wolf squeezed into overly tight clothing. His wings, bound painfully tight to his back, shifted and cracked beneath his shirt, tensing as his chest did, before trying to snap wide open, rending the thin layer of cotton apart. His legs and tail burst free of his pants shortly after, having gotten much larger with his gradual increase in overall size that the fabric could no longer hold.

Once he’d reached the heart of the small gathering of trees, Methaeus had lost all traces of his humanity, breathing with a deep growl as his eyes darted around all over, as if in search of anything that moved. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement of something small and dark, turning to face it, before lunging upon it with a vicious snarl. He yanked it up by the scruff of its neck in his teeth, sabre fangs cutting along the rodent-like animal’s sides, and he snapped his head to and fro, throwing the unfortunate creature around like a rag doll. As it shrieked in pain and terror, he paused, ears pricking, before flinging it into a tree, pouncing on it again only to rip it apart in a furious assault of tooth and claw.

Finished splattering the small animal over the area, he turned to the next living thing nearest to him, slamming a taloned hand into the trunk of a tree with a thunderous roar, before yanking his fingers upward, rending a splintered path up its length, before uprooting the ancient itself. From there he threw it, turning to the next, which he slashed apart from the middle, lunging up the one right next to it as he saw birds take flight from the canopy. He snapped at the first one he could reach, extracting a sickening squelch and thick cloud of blood, before leaping up to the next few, doing the same with each of them until he could no longer reach the rest of the small flock without taking flight.

Landing heavily on the ground below amongst a flurry of feathers, Methaeus snarled, snapping his head from side to side, then leaped at the next plant to irritate him with its presence, releasing another furious roar as he soon reduced it to splinters, before turning to the next in line. He kept at this pace until nothing was left but the thoroughly dead remnants of his destruction, leering odiously around at the splintered trees and splotches of blood over the trampled grass, soon turning to leave, before suddenly freezing.

His ears pricked back, hackles raising as his wings and tail turned stiff, and his entire form convulsed, just before bursting into a violent fit of choking and coughing. He didn’t stop until leaving a clear splatter of crimson on the ground, hunched down on all fours as he took in slow, uneven breaths, and slowly lifted his mighty head, looking around with a slightly muddled blink, before registering the havoc wrought in the area around him. “What…?” his deep, rumbling voice began, fading as suddenly as it had sounded. What was going on…? Why was he smelling so many different types of blood?

As he further analyzed the area, Methaeus paused again, running his tongue along the inside of his mouth and furrowing his brow, before parting his muzzle and reaching into his cheek, pulling out a long, bloodied feather. He turned it in his thickly furred fingers, staring closely at it even as air around him turned dark, and rain began to fall in a light drizzle, before turning to the bloody, furry and feathery mess right behind him, at which he stared for a long while. Only after he’d been thoroughly drenched did he display any signs of being aware that it was his doing, his eyes turning aghast as his bloodied arms began to quiver. Eventually, that quivering spread to the rest of his body, a slight mist of shadow intermingling with that of the rain, until a pale form wobbled where the large beast once stood, soon collapsing onto bare knees.

Methaeus seemed to crumple, gripping tightly to his shoulders as he hunched forward amidst his trembling. His slender frame racked with cold, while his lionesque eyes widened further in horror, staring at the remnants of the unfortunate Melifa and the small birds. It was happening again… he had another spell… He rather suddenly felt very exhausted and weak, as if the energy had been plucked right out of him, and he slowly reached a feeble hand towards the Melifa’s mutilated form, touching his fingertips to the splintered bone as he whispered an earnest and near-silent apology.

Soon doing the same for what remnants of the birds he could find, he gathered up the feathers in his immediate area, as well as what parts of the avians he could scrounge up, setting them aside with the Melifa, before putting his human hands to work against the hard, wet earth. After a short while, he’d dug up a small indent in the ground, reaching mud-caked hands to slide the large rodent into it, before taking up a number of sizable splinters, and arranging them over it. Making certain they would stay put, he then shuffled over, hunching down to claw at the dirt again, until having dug out another shallow hole, reaching to gather the avian remains and set them down inside, before gathering another collection of splinters to arrange over them, doing so, and then slowly standing.

It was a strange gesture, he knew, but he also knew it wasn’t necessarily a bad one. He didn’t know what else to do, so he did what he could, and hoped that it would be enough. Lifting his hands, he pressed his palms together, aligning the tips of his middle fingers with the end of his nose, and closed his eyes, bowing his head, while bending the upper half of his torso forward a little. As he corrected his posture, he glanced around at the remnants of the trees he’d rent asunder, a frown etching into his pale visage as he shook his head, before he turned, beginning his slow trek back towards the cabin.

Methaeus moved with a heavy trudge, head hanging a little with the weight of all the water in his hair, and his arms dangled from their sockets, while his lithe form shivered, still pummeled endlessly by the continuous assault of rain. Some distance along on the way back, crimson and cerulean eyes flicked over to the side, gathering a slight flicker of gold off to the side, which he soon swerved and stooped down to pick up, shaking it out as he brought it eye level. He was looking at his glasses, which had apparently fallen off shortly after his face had first begun shifting into a muzzle earlier.

With no proper means of cleaning them off, he simply shook as much of the dirt off as he could, lifting the lenses to the rain in hopes of further removing it, before shaking them out one last time, returning them to their perch on the bridge of his nose. They felt cold to his face, bringing him to shake his head a little bit, before he pulled his hair out from beneath them, continuing his slow trek back to the cabin, becoming ever colder with each step he took. As he neared the humble structure, his rain-blurred vision gathered a small form in the still open doorway, one that moved back and to the side as he further approached, until he stepped in the door, a cold, shaken, sopping wet mess.

He turned his head, peering at the young lass with a stare that seemed deprived of sleep for days, before shifting his attention back to his original path of travel, stepping quietly inside. He traversed back through the rooms, stooping down to pick up his robes and his cowl as he passed them, and let them drag along the floors, making his way back into the study. Passing the sizable puddle of blood, he offered it no glance, simply reaching a hand out over it as he kept moving, summoning a small spark of black across its surface, which soon spread into an entire layer that seemed to devour the crimson fluid, before sinking into the floor.

Wearily, Methaeus reached down for his chair, lifting it up off its side and replacing it on its own legs, before collapsing heavily into it, dropping his robbing and cowl beside it. He reached for his quill with the same hand, taking it back up, and leaned down over the page his book had been left on, finishing that last sentence, before turning the page, and beginning to write what appeared an actual journal entry, instead of research or observational notes.

--

17th day of Blood Month

7382nd year

14th hour

Weather: formerly partial clouds, currently heavy rain

Disposition: tired, frigid, shaken… a touch frightened

It has been millennia since last I had to record such an occurrence in this weathered tome of mine… the thought of which sends horrendous tremors along my spine. It seems I have begun to display signs of gradual chaotic corruption again, having experienced another of the instances associated with the first stage.

This time the energies running through my bloodstream assailed my digestive system, until my stomach had been so filled with blood it became aggravated and forced it out by somewhat violent means, leaving my abdomen still notably sore as a result. Shortly following, I did the only thing I had the capacity to devise at the time. I fled. I moved as quickly as I could on unstable feet, continuing on even after I had left the humble abode within which we currently reside.

The very depths of my being quake with dread; while my memories of the following events are somewhat hazy, I still have a vague notion of what transpired. Without my consent, my body dispelled the chaotic illusion I have woven around myself, and with it, what traces of the humanity I had acquired over the eras. My mind became feral, bestial, and my normally civilized thoughts reduced to extremely violent tendencies.

I came upon a thicket of mighty and ancient plants, to which I began to lay waste, regardless of the indigenous fauna residing among them. I mutilated a large rodent of the Melifa specie, and crushed half a flock of small birds one by one. The trees I rent asunder until they were no more than splinters, and my unprovoked fury did not cease until my hands had nothing left to destroy, at which point the chaos within me finally decided it had been appeased, and left me utterly exhausted.

As the lords would have it, my body, cold and exposed as it is, burns furiously with guilt. These hands, caked in blood and dirt, did what they could to set those poor animals to rest, yet the sensation had not withdrawn in the least, flaring angrier than ever as I sit here and scribble down these very words. I fear what the future lays in store for me, for I still have yet to decide what these events will eventually entail.

I can only pray that, by the time my mind has been twisted beyond all hope, I will have parted ways from these children. I am fond of them all, and could never bring any of them intentional harm.

--

As he finished writing, he carefully placed the pure white quill onto the desk beside his book, turning his head to glance at the clock perched on one of the emptier shelves of the book case, and frowned, reaching to rub at his eyes. Almost an hour had passed, and his handwriting was not as neat as usual due to his shaking, despite his slower pace in an attempt to take care in his writing. His eyes burned angrily, drier in his weariness, and seemed a little more crimson than cerulean, the contrast accented by the dark shadows looming beneath the ocular organs. Eventually lowering his fingers, he leaned sluggishly back in his seat, releasing a soft, almost sighing breath, before turning, those haggard crimson-cerulean eyes meeting a pair of pale grey.

“…Yes, Ginjao?”

“Are you alright, Methaeus? You’ve been shivering for the past hour,” the jade-topped lass observed, brows furrowed in worriment.

Methaeus blinked at the girl a moment, upper half twisted around in his seat a bit, before he turned it altogether, facing it sideways from the door to make looking at it a little bit easier, while a quiet sigh escaped his throat. “I’m just a little shaken… that’s all.”

“…What for? What’s rattled your nerves enough to keep them going like that for so long?”

“I’m… not sure how to explain that, Ginjao. It’s… a little complicated.”

Ginjao frowned, shifting on her feet, and pushed away from the doorframe where she’d propped herself, stepping cautiously forth. “Do you think you could try? I know gagging up blood like that isn’t normal, even for you.”

Methaeus flinched upon hearing that last part, reddening a little bit as his head sank into his shoulders. “Oh, goodness… You saw that?”

Ginjao shook her head, pausing by his chair and folding her hands behind her back. “No, I didn’t. I saw the puddle, though. That couldn’t have been good for your stomach.”

“Oh, it wasn’t,” Methaeus groaned, recalling the instance a little too clearly for his liking. “I’ve… been presented again with an age-old problem, one that threatens the very things that make me who I am. I hail from a strongly chaotic bloodline, my own near legendary. I am the third –the youngest—of three brothers that were destined to become great and powerful guardians of ancient and equally powerful secrets. For this reason we were given the title ‘The Chaotic Three’, however unlike my brothers, I decided long ago to defy that which had been set for me, and set out to take on the life of a scholar, where I gathered information, instead of keeping it like a lock on a rotting tome.”

Ginjao listened intently; glancing between the Chaos Weaver and the ancient book on the desk, before turning her attention back on Methaeus himself, the hint of a question in her eyes.

Watching her a moment, the man eventually made note of the look on her face, offering a faint blink as he adjusted his glasses, before turning his head to glance at the desk himself. “Why did I defy my so-called destiny, you wonder? Well… That was a decision not made just on my own, but with the help of losing contact with my brothers…

“…when they both fell to chaotic corruption. Both of them turned from sophisticated beasts to mindless monsters within the course of a few short years, having never thought to oppose the permanent changes their chaotic energies were making to their minds.

“Rokushuu, the eldest of the three, lives sealed up inside a winding congregation of caverns within an ancient mountain, playing with his ability to enter, investigate, and control minds. He takes control of those with fragile hearts when they are surrounded by the most of their closest friends, family, and companions, and then forces them to torture and slaughter indiscriminately, before leaving them to suffer the agonizing guilt of knowing that they were the ones that brought those they loved through immeasurable amounts of pain. Oftentimes their hearts are too weak, and they last little more than a couple of weeks before bringing themselves to death.” Pausing, Methaeus turned his head back, shifting lionesque eyes on Ginjao, to be greeted by her aghast stare, to which he was not at all surprised.

“That… That’s horrible…” she barely whispered, a hand hovering before her lip.

“Yes… yes, it is. It shames me to know that this is what has become of my eldest brother, the one we figured the strongest, both in mind and body. My second brother, Nikumu, had fallen even faster, released shortly after the completion of his corruption, where he then laid waste to an entire guardian village, and caused the fall of a great kingdom. Unlike Rokushuu, however, he made an enemy of himself with the race that currently hates our kind the most –the Ryuakurei—and infuriated their prince in particular. He wasn’t able to gloat for very long before he was killed.

“Seeing what had become of them, I learned to fear what the future had in store for me, so I went into Chaos Weaver apprenticeship instead, where I learned to do much more constructive things with my chaotic talents. I was a fool to think that just avoiding the role of a guardian would be enough to keep corruption from taking me as well.” Methaeus leaned forward in his seat, perching his elbows on his knees, and lopped his forehead into his palms, sifting his fingers through his hair and grabbing at his skull. “No matter how I try to run from it, it’s always there, ready to bite me in the ass at any given moment… I’m in the first stage out of six, and I can’t say I won’t eventually fall like my brothers did over a thousand years ago.”

“First stage?” Ginjao echoed, having pulled a spare seat over to sit near him, and leaned her jaw on the heels of her palms, peering up from her lower viewpoint.

Methaeus nodded, turning to make certain the ink was dry, before flipping back a good number of pages, pulling the tome right off the desk and turning back. “The first stage of the corruption process, where the spells are most apparent. Each ‘spell’ one of four of the body’s major internal organs is attacked –the stomach, the lungs, the brain, or the heart. Once the body properly reacts, the chaos in the victim’s blood surges the mind, temporarily eradicating all sense of morals and rationale. At this particular instance, the subject’s humanity is lost, and they become as feral as an untamed beast.”

“…The brain and the heart?” Ginjao blinked, brows furrowed.

“Yes. Depending upon the species, they may or may not die during the first stage. Thus far I have had two. The first attack was on my brain; within an instant my eyes rolled into the back of my head and I collapsed, only to get back up moments later and attack my immediate surroundings. I almost killed a Dracite child that particular episode,” Methaeus muttered softly, closing his eyes and resting his chin on his intertwined fingers. “This spell, well…” Lifting his head, he flipped through the pages again, returning to the end of the written portion, where his last entry was, turning it and handing it to her, before getting up and striding quietly about the room.

It was a surprise to her that he actually gave the book to her to read, but Ginjao didn’t complain; apparently he didn’t mind others reading what most would consider a diary or personal journal entry. Looking over the length a moment, she ran her fingers down the page, before lifting her gaze to the top, where she began reading over the heading first, and then the entry itself, slipping into a more focused state of mind, where she became oblivious to Methaeus’ idle pacing and leaning over to the bookcase. She read slower than usual, to make certain she missed nothing, and as she finished, heard his voice begin, as if on cue.

“I have two more spells ahead of me before I reach the second stage; the heart and lungs. The reaction for the lungs is simple, and relatively benign, more or less just a temporary inability to breathe with a slight flooding of blood, while the heart, well… I assume that I will experience a sort of variation of a heart attack and collapse, before going into cardiac arrest. Whether I will survive I have yet to determine; I only hope that when I do, I will be alone, and if not, that those around me will leave as quickly as they can.”

Slowly lifting back upright, Methaeus raised a small, crystalline figurine to the light of the candle he had lit on top of the bookcase, oblivious to the long, almost lamentous stare focused on the back of his head, and squinted an eye as he shut the other, shifting the trinket in his fingers, until an entire prism of colors shone down upon his face. “When my heart is attacked, I want it to be made certain that all living beings within the general area have cleared out. If I die, so be it. As long as those around me are safe, I don’t care what happens to me.”

Lowering the figurine, he lowered his head as well, about to turn and continue speaking, until a sudden jerk of his form brought him to flinch with a grunt. Something was tightening his waist, and he could feel pressure on his back, about to turn and hit himself free of what he thought was his own shadow, before hearing a soft voice muffled by his hair.

“How can you say that, after all the good you’ve done? What about your friends and the people that care about you? Do they mean nothing?” Ginjao murmured into his back, her voice seeming somewhat shaken as she tightened her hold around his waist, nuzzling her temple against his shoulder blade.

“…I’m a monster, Ginjao. This slender frame before you is nothing more than a complex illusion woven around a beastly body.”

“Not anymore… The illusion had become much more than that a long time ago… I can tell. The form I’m holding now is closer to the real you than what lies beneath could ever be. You may be Dathalhim… but your heart is more human than over half the very race you mimic.”

A single, soft chuckle escaped Methaeus’ throat, a feeble smile tugging the corners of his lips, and he closed his eyes, lowering his head somewhat. “Perhaps, but that doesn’t change what I really am, and the fact that my kind is very widely hated. This body is nothing more than a false human, and I am what most consider an abomination.” As he felt a sudden squeeze around his waist, the weak smile on his face was almost immediately replaced by a look of bewilderment; head swiveling around to peer back at the jade-topped lass, before jerked forward as she threw herself back, blinking cluelessly while she suddenly turned for the door.

“I-I’m sorry! Excuse me.” With that, she hurried out, not once looking back at him, and all the while keeping her head down, where her pale hair obscured her face.

Methaeus stared absolutely befuddled after her, blinking stupidly, and slowly corrected his posture, reaching up to push his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, before turning, leaning down to gather up the heavy mass of amethyst robes sitting by his chair. He fought his way back into them, wriggling a little bit underneath them, and leaned over the back of the chair to close his book, clipping the quill back to its spine, and then tucking the ancient tome back into the loose garment’s folds. Lifting back upright, he turned, pushing the chair in towards the desk, before striding quietly out, heading down the corridor, where he paused at the end, peering around the living room with an inquisitive eye. Ginjao was nowhere in sight.

“She went outside. She was in quite a rush.”

Human ear twitching with the rumbling voice, Methaeus turned his head, blood and ocean gaze meeting the form of a large, burly man appearing in his late twenties, early thirties stretched along the couch, whittling idly away at something of ivory color and unknown texture. “Tyrrandus—”

“What in the hell did you do in there that got her so worked up?”

Quirking his lip, the Chaos Weaver leaned his head to the side, scratching at the back of his neck with the slightest hint of guilt creeping into his face. “I think I said something I shouldn’t have.”

“Oh? Whatever gave you that idea?” Tyrrandus inquired rather drily, shutting eerie honey gold eyes as his sturdy fingers continued to cut away at the peculiar substance in hand with a small, conjured blade.

“Er… Perhaps the way she squeezed me, before running off in an effort to hide having burst into tears?”

Tyrrandus perked an eye open to peer up at the man, before uttering a low grunt and returning to his idle whittling.

Methaeus frowned, hitting his back to the wall, where he slid down until his rump met the floor. “…maybe explained things I shouldn’t have. I don’t know. I can only assume that I’d given too much information to process all at once, and not enough time to understand it properly before speaking ill of my existence.”

“She loves you, you know.”

Methaeus shifted his gaze off the floor, slowly turning it to meet that of Tyrrandus’ own, before reaching to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose, brushing away a few rebellious bits of near black crimson in the process. “…Yes, I know. She shouldn’t, though.”

“And why not? I have yet to see anything wrong with it.”

“I’m not a lover, Tyr. I’m a scholar, and a beast besides. A potential demon such as myself doesn’t deserve her affection, especially not if my presence alone poses a threat to her very life.”

Tyrrandus turned his head back towards what his hands were doing with another low grunt, returning his eye closed as he lower his chin to his chest a little. “That’s not enough to convince someone to stop caring for another like Ginjao does you, mage.”

Methaeus heaved a quiet sigh, sifting his fingers through his hair as he pressed an open palm to his forehead. “I know, I know… I still can’t help but think her affection is misplaced. Why waste it on someone who will surely lose all sense of themselves and their humanity at any given time? I’m as much an abomination as most other races believe us to be… I just masquerade in this guise to make my quest for knowledge easier to carry out. I have no proper reason to make myself kinder on the eyes like this… I just do so to hide what it is exactly that I am.”

“Seems that in the process you’ve grown into that guise. Despite your doubts, I think the girl is right. Over the millennia, you’ve gradually been becoming human.”

“Bah! Preposterous!”

“What’s so absurd about it? It certainly is possible.”

“What would you know, infant?”

“I’m a Tyflos Kairishonan, and a brigadier general at that,” Tyrrandus began patiently, perking his eerie gold eyes open again and turning them on Methaeus. “I have a high rank in a military comprised of elite shifters, and I didn’t reach it just by being born. I know it’s possible to become what you make yourself look like because I’ve seen it happen among my own kind. It’s why I don’t spend exceedingly long amounts of time in this form; if I do, I slice off what fragment of my life expectancy I have left.”

“…I’m sorry. I may not be a Kairishonan myself, but you’re right. I can’t believe I was just denying such a fact after the amounts of literature I’ve read that states it as plain as day.” Methaeus rubbed his head, resting his cheek against his bent wrist. “I can’t stand what these spells do to me… I have become more disagreeable than a Zeruhin with a needle in the back of its neck. I pray Ginjao is alright; I’ve been a bastard since I reclaimed my humanity.”

Tyrrandus snorted, peering at the Lamka now pinched between his fingers, and sat up, reaching to set the lion-tailed replica down on the end table at his feet. “I’m sure she’s fine. She just needed some time to process all that information you stuffed into her head.”

“I did mention I’m a bastard once recovering from chaotic possession, right?”

“…Yeah. Do me a favor. The next time you have another one of your ‘spells’, lock yourself up for the next day. The very anti-scholar demeanor you’ve got right now bothers me.”

“…Sorry. I can’t necessarily help it, I fear.” Methaeus fidgeted a little uneasily with Tyrrandus’ following stare, tugging idly on a stray piece of hair hanging in his face, and turned his attention to the window, where he saw that it was still raining heavily out, to which he frowned. “…I should go find her.” And with that, he returned to his feet, turning to stride down the hall, where he turned into the study, grabbing up his cowl and throwing it over his shoulders, before heading outdoors.

Promptly met with rain, he squinted his eyes over his glasses, lifting a hand to his brow to shield his vision a little from the water, and looked around, before turning and striding off in the same direction he’d fled over an hour ago.