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Yyyyyyup. Alec's guess was right on the money. Alec sighed a long sigh, closing his eyes as he began to speak. "Lia, before I say anything else, I'd like to ask something of you." Alec's eyes opened and looked directly into hers as he spoke again. "Kindly take the silver spoon out of your a** and speak to me as someone who knows that they are a flawed human being rather than someone who's so conceited that they s**t light."

Alec's gaze had taken on an icy tone that he reserved for people that he simply despised, and Lia had just made the list. Alec walked right up to her desk and stared her down as he tried so very hard to not spit the words coming out of his mouth at her. "Let's be perfectly honest. This is no longer a discussion about what light and dark magic is. This is a discussion on morals and how people view each other. You believe yourself to be better than everyone else around you. I can tell simply by the way you hold your head just a centimeter higher than anyone else that you can see. You believe yourself to be perfect, and since you happen to use white magic you believe white magic to also be perfect. Because if white magic were not perfect, then you in turn might also not be perfect. And that just might be a fate worse than death, now wouldn't it?" Alec added a heavy dose of sarcasm to his last statement, making sure that Lia knew his distaste for people like her. People who believed themselves better than others simply because they had the means to look nicer, "act" nicer, or simply appear to be better than anyone else, when in truth they were far from it.

Casually he lit a cigarette. People stared, as people often did. This boy was different, and they all knew it; deep down, truly none of them could fully decide whether to respect him or ignore him.
But he didn't care which they chose, it would all end the same for them one day. If anyone gave him a particularly callous look, he would perhaps scoff at them, perhaps blow some sort of strange mystic tobacco into their face.

And then the father was beside him, once more in his favored form. He walked calmly behind his son, as if choosing the words carefully in his head.
"You do know," he muttered. "that to become stronger than Ialo, god forbid myself, you may need to study here."

He stopped, his face blank. The father continued on, and after several moments of silent shock he scrambled after him. He was walking much faster now; Alexander's pace had nearly doubled and he was only just keeping up with him.

"I know, you don't want to hear that. And trust me, neither do any of them."

"Who exactly do you mean by them?"

"Everyone, who else. The teachers, the administrators, the students, the beasts, the beings, the books, the school itself. Your heritage bears a stigma here that no deed shall ever scrub away. You're to be hated, loathed, and utterly disdained for the rest of your life. And sadly, that is simply what fate has in store for you."

"So I get screwed because of your actions?"

"Precisely. I would have perhaps phrased it slightly more eloquently, but yes, just as all others you are judged by a community by the actions of those in your line that have come before you. I have done great things, and were it not for myself none of them would exist. And yet they hate me. They seek ways to rip me from this very reality. All sentient creations will turn on their creators, the closest reason I can grasp as a motive is simple jealousy. Although initially it may be only mistrust, in the end it becomes jealousy, envy in its most lucrative and utterly vicious form. They hate me for what I have done for them, the very act that they know they shall never be capable of. Do you ever wonder what happened to the Olympians? They quit. I gave them strength, gave them speed, gave them intellect over their peons, and yet they collapsed just as all other religions through the years have. It really is a psychological torment to have something you care for despise your very existence."

Alexander merely scowled at him.

"Hm, a shame that I don't care about you or that may have stung. Anyways, despite my ramblings, you need to get yourself into at least a few classes here. Bribe, lie, cheat, I don't care. Just do it. Find a professor or some other higher-up that can help."

And then he was gone, and Alexander was left roaming the hallways. Up ahead he noticed a flood of students pouring into the hall. A figure he had spotted last night was standing in the doorway.
He headed for that room.

"Spot on, spot on." he said as he entered the classroom where Professor Leaton stood lecturing his student. "A very livid speech for a teacher, I have to say I'm impressed."
He found a clear section of wall and leaned against it, not wanting to sit.
"Say, how'd a good ol' topper like yourself like me as a student? Personally, I don't care what you say, but my ambition is there and I have cash. I need to learn, and I need to learn fast."

"Well s**t." was about all that came out of his mouth as the door locked behind him.
He mulled around outside, smoking cigarette after seemingly endless cigarette, clouding that portion of the hallway in an almost iridescent haze.

Alec's stare remained firm as he kept eye contact with Lia. Her reactions were EXACTLY as he predicted. All her life Lia had thought herself to be the perfect child, and as such expected that she get the proper attention and respect for that. But when she didn't, and all the attention she thought she deserved went to Danni for one reason or another, it ate at her in ways that she could never have understood at the time. Her jealousy had turned her into a monstrosity of what could have been a very loving sister and daughter.

Alec breathed out through his nose slowly as he took in all that she said, and aimed his next statement right for the heart of the issue. "Lia, you're jealous because Danni achieved something you refused to find. Happiness in a world that is filled with thousands upon thousands of problems."

Alec leaned in closer so that Lia could hear him clear as day as he began his final words towards her. "Allow me to enlighten you about your situation. People like you make me sick. You believe that everything is to be given to you without question, and when it isn't, you throw a tantrum. Under normal circumstances I would allow you to live your life as such, and relish in the fact that at some point in your life you would wake up and realize that you don't have any real friends, you don't have a husband or lover that truly respects you or loves you, and all in all you have a rather horrible life because you are truly not happy with yourself. But I am taking time out of my life to show you your problems right to your face out of respect for your sister. For some reason or another she loved you. Deep down, under all the immediate hate and anger, she loved you, otherwise she wouldn't have taken all of the s**t you gave her over the course of her life. If she had no love for you, I guarantee that you would have been dead many many years ago. But as it is, she saw something in you, however minute it might be, that was worth saving. So, in respect of that fact and the fact that you are not a complete loss, I am showing you the error of your ways. And hopefully you will realize just how miserable you really are and walk away from this ordeal a stronger woman because of it."

Alec stood back from the desk and snapped his fingers again, releasing Lia from the chair. Alec crossed his arms over his chest as he spoke his final words to Lia. "And since you still seem to be in the denial stage of acceptance, I'm going to force you to face your life head on. You will write me a 40 page essay, single spaced, 6 point font, about your life. You will tell me all the things that you enjoy in life, you will tell me why you enjoy those things, you will tell me about your immediate family and what you truly think of them all, and that includes Danni, and finally at the end of it you will make a list of 30 things that you actually like about Danni, and you will explain why you like each of those things about her. This essay will be worth half of your grade in this class. If you choose not to do it, the highest you can hope to get in my class is a 50%, a failing grade. And since status seems to be ever so important to you, I doubt that you will want that on your record."

Alec finally nodded towards the door, which unlocked itself and swung open for Lia. Alec's tone was just as even as when he started this conversation. "I expect to see that essay on my desk by tomorrow morning Ms. Rinaldi. Goodbye."

With a sigh, Arzol studied Ialo for a moment before he snapped his fingers, and a stack of files appeared on the desk. All of them were marked simple Shadow Runner. Taking the first file from the stack, Arzol licked his finger, flipped through the endless paperwork. "Ok, this one's focusing on her consorts with the Boss throughout the years. Before she broke away and declared loyalty to the Ancients, she was a student of the Dark Book, or so we thought. Turns out she'd been studying from the Book of the Ancients. From the time she was seven up until she hit fourteen, she made bi-weekly trips down to hell. Since she showed promise, that's how often the Boss had her coming in for...status battles. He pitted her against demons, and every time she won her status went up...She never did lose that I'm aware of." He said this with a shrug of acceptance, twirling the earring in his right ear again, as it had become a habit.

"She was legendary among the demons. She was especially skilled with controlling shadows and her body, combining the two into her own special brand of offensive. She could make her body dissolve so fast all you had to do was blink, and she mixed with the shadows, made them one with her, utilized them as a weapon, hence 'Shadow Runner'. She had a knack for summoning spells, too, and keeping the summoned demons under her control, which isn't as easy as she made it look." He shrugged this off as well, accepting that there was a certain level he could never attain.

"Anyway, the chick had basically free reign in the different realms of hell for years, gained a ton of respect because she didn't take any s**t but she knew how to make ya laugh. There was time she worked with us, me and my guys in Hell's Guard, when she was still in a lower level of status. It was...great working with her, fascinating, and I probably wouldn't hate her guts if she hadn't betrayed us and developed a conscience. But seriously, man, the girl knew every loophole in the Dark Book known to man and demon alike. If there was a way to counter a spell, she knew it, if there was a way to improve one, she figured that out soon enough too." He grinned despite himself, remembering the way she'd gone at the Dark Book with a sharpie on one occassion when they'd been doing business in the 2nd Realm, crossing things out, adding things in the margins, scowling and muttering about sheer idiocy and unnecessary waste.

"She had this...untapped power inside of her and I used to think, 'Man, I hope to God I'm there when she breaks out of her shell. She's this good now, imagine how great she'll be once she lets herself go.' And it really was like she was keeping it all inside, under this huge restraint, holding it all inside herself like she didn't want anyone else to see exactly what she could do. Used to piss me off that she could kick my a** when she wasn't half trying. Still does, come to think of it." He said, scratching his chin, and found it was easier to remember he'd respected her now that she was dead and a wandering soul.

"Man, she was involved in everything, partnered up with the best of the best before we discovered she did much better flying solo. Anyone else just slowed her down and pissed her off. If some demon army stormed through vampire territory, you got word it was Shadow heading the front lines. If the hell dragons revolted and tried to leave their assigned realm, you bet your a** it was Shadow going down there and showing them their place. The Boss used to like to think of her as his personal pet, kept her sitting at a throne by his side, black tiara and cape and everything. We knew she'd get restless and bored, and sure enough more often than not she was dashing off to help train troops or escape back to the Top World. She was the favored Sorceress, though, so she got away with it. Really pissed off the Boss good when she declared allegiance to the Ancients, and he practically destroyed the 4th Realm when he discovered that this century's Hero of Prophecy that he'd been trying to pin down had been her all along." He shook his head, chuckling to himself.

Alec heaved a heavy sigh as Lia stormed out of his room. He knew the assignment he gave her was astronomically difficult, but that was the point. Alec didn't expect her to do a great job with it, it was meant to be so large that she would be forced to look at each detail he discussed as she wrote. He hoped that by the end of it Lia would realize just where she stood in this life. So long as Lia put in the effort to finish the paper and face the facts of her life, then Alec would probably grade the paper as some hefty extra credit assignment. However, if she did decide that even after facing all the aspects of her life that she still wanted to be the stuck-up brat that she was, then Alec would grade the paper accordingly.

However, Alec had yet another issue to deal with, and it was standing outside his door smoking up a storm. Alec waved his hand and a small burst of wind blew the smoke away from him and the classroom. Alec leaned up against his desk as he rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his mind for the moment. "Alright, your turn. Get in here and make it fast, I'm not in a good mood right now."