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"You know Ialo, if they really want to help, I could always give them a certain...gift."

His eyes obscured as usual, those who were looking saw that grin streak across his face, nearly from ear to ear, narrow as ever, disturbing as ever.

"So children, what do you say? I can make you strong, almost as strong as I made your headmaster here. Now you'd like that, wouldn't you? To be as strong as big mean Ialo Enlil? Hmph, he's more powerful than even he understands."

Athena stared, wide-eyed at Ialo. Such a violent reaction... what did this do? This 'gift'? What about it would provoke Ialo so?

Ialo stared at Riser, twitching slightly. "I... am not... I am NOT like that. I'm not." He was nervous, and his mind was coming undone. He edged away, his eyes flashing from hazel to red, to blue, not quite sure what to be. He didn't know what be, or even what exactly it was he didn't want to be.

"You're terrifying your students you uncertain fool! Get yourself together for ******** sake, how do you expect me to chip away at you if you can do no more than sit and babble like a mental patient! Do you know why I gave you that gift? It's because you're a leader, and because you are able to easily gather allies to your cause! I didn't give that to you to lock away and hide, it was meant to be shown, meant to inspire people, meant to show them what they can be, what they were designed to be!"

The ethereal arm shot out and smashed into a nearby wall, crushing the cement bricks beneath it to ********! Who knows, maybe I was wrong in choosing you. Look at you, you're pathetic. How in the hell do you expect to stop Setsuka in the shape you're in? I'll tell you how, you won't. She'll eat your heart and spit it out and stomp on it. You're nothing more than a coward, and you've done that to yourself. Time to man up Ialo, time to take charge and do what you were born to do!"

Athena didn't know what to do. She was so out of the loop, so confused. They kept jumping around, and it wasn't helping her. "What's going on?" she reiterated. "Why--why are you three but not? What happened to you? Why am I the only one who doesn't know what's happening?" Her questions seemed endless, and as she continued, her voice grew higher, more panicked, though she herself never moved anything but her mouth. Her tail hung limp, her ears were simply there. She didn't know what to do.

"... No," Ialo whispered. "I've basing everything off of what I heard from Devin years ago." There, he said it. Everything he had ever done was based off of pure speculation. Nothing had a tangible foundation, except for her personal philosophy: avoid pain. "But I have the key he made." Who knows, maybe the fact that he had a way to go into that dimension would count for something.

"And, we don't have an army, but we have something. There's Kai, and the other Silverwings. Danni, and her following of demons. Athena and Adolf know other hanyou, and Ophiuchus is the apprentice of a very old goddess. He's not hated." Ialo began to count of everything he could think of. "I know many other dragons, and there's still all those artifacts made from the Fountain's water. There's a pair of swords, once stops time and the other severs magic. And...." he made a tiny gesture towards Riser. "There's you..."

You know how some people say you sneeze when someone's talking about you? Well, ghosts don't really have the capability to sneeze anymore, so they have another way of alerting James to someone talking about them; getting really, really, loud. James put his hand to his head, the flood of voices suddenly breaking into his consciousness, like he'd suddenly walked into an auditorium full of shouting students with megaphones. He went down on one knee, using the scythe as a crutch and focusing his powers through it. They slowly stopped shouting as he sat there, his breathing labored as he waited for them to calm down.

As they started to quiet down, he wondered what could have happened. Did something else happen? He was fairly well informed because of them, but usually something didn't really happen at the school that caused... well... all of them to start freaking out like that. The shouting had caused him to break his concentration, the two thousand nine hundred and eighty one spirits that always surrounded him becoming visible as so many balls of different colored light. He slowly got back up to his feet as all but a few of the voices went silent. It was difficult to calm them all at once when they got excited....

He raised his hand for a moment, all but the three or four balls circling the scythe disappearing again. A small bead of sweat formed on his forehead. That was the thing about his abilities, it wasn't so much taxing on his powers as much as taxing on his mental state. Then again, if you had almost three thousand dead people shouting in your head you'd be a little messed up in the head too. He wasn't as bad as he probably would be if he hadn't been found by the magic school... if he hadn't he'd probably be dead... or worse.

He looked up, seeing a woman who seemed rather... lost. She was also holding a... cow? In her hand. Not the weirdest thing he'd seen at the school, although the coloring was a bit strange. He preferred darker hues, like dark violet, or maybe black and red. He cracked his neck fairly loudly, spinning the scythe expertly in his hand and placing it in two straps sewn into the back of this particular shirt to hold the scythe. He wiped the sweat from his forehead as he walked over, normally he wasn't one to talk, but he was a bit shaken up. Even if it was helping someone find their way, he needed to be near someone for the moment, and he didn't exactly have a lot of friends.

"I'm going to guess that you're a new teacher," he said somewhat casually, brushing the dust off the bottom of his cut up cargo pants. "You looking for somewhere in particular or are you just exploring the place?" he asked, the balls of light around the scythe vanishing as well. Some of the more... in-tune in the building could see the balls of light, but he could conceal them from them if they weren't looking for them.

James thought for a moment. He hadn't had the magical creatures class since his first year at the school, it just wasn't really something that interested him. That, and it tended to attract all the bubbly bright eyed students that were afraid of him. Usually when someone said Necromancer or Lich they immediately thought 'dark magic' and the person that is one, namely him, was promptly shunned by the rest of the student population. Which suited him just fine he supposed... he just got lonely sometimes.

However, the headmaster's office he'd been to now and again. There was the occasional accidental death on campus and he tended to attract the spirits of the students that died on campus so he could tell them how they died. Well, sometimes. If they didn't know how they died the spirit wasn't exactly much help... except in certain cases where there's a hole in their head or something. Unlike on TV and movies he didn't ever see someone with a knife sticking out of their head or something, he just saw a vague outline of them, they weren't solid or anything.

He was starting to calm down, and he raised his hand, a yellow ball of light becoming visible above it. "Yeah, I can lead you to the Headmaster's office Miss...?" he asked. He could probably get a spirit to lead them to the magical creatures class too, but he didn't really care that much. Headmaster's office was fine, at least to him. If she'd prefer the other she would have said that one first most likely.