Welcome to Gaia! ::

Laven had been alone for almost an hour just thinking about random things.

Life in the Dark Kingdom was lackluster and oftentimes dull. Work was life and life was work, there was no separation between them when. Time was either spent in her designated lab within the castle walls or at home reading a book or being lazy. Wolframite was typically busy with paperwork and had little time to do something fun with her.

It was disappointing and at times made her heartache but his love and loyalty were to the Negaverse, she just simply could not compete. Laven knew he cared for her as she did him but it didn’t make her feel any less lonely when the opportunity to make new memories kept sleeping through their fingers like fine-grain sand.

Last year she had attended the festival alone and she had expected this year to be much the same.

How wrong she was…

First a Squire interrupted her hunt for those odd reflections, then Tinaksite showed up in her home with a bag of candy thinking that she had been the one to leave them in her apartment. While it would have been nice to have left it on a good note it didn’t end there. A run-in with a lieutenant at the reservoir, which was fine, and then the most startling encounter happened a few days later when she ran into Knight with glowing marks on his skin.

There seemed to be a pattern forming and Lavendulan was loath to see how long it would continue.

A third visit to the reservoir had yielded about an hour of peace and quiet, something she had dearly craved with all her being. Although she wished that she could just feel the sun upon her scales, Laven knew how dangerous it would be if anyone saw her in her true form.

Icy blue eyes studied the water's surface hoping, if not expecting, to suddenly see whatever it was that had been hiding at the bottom of the reservoir. When she had teleported the Squire here, something had grabbed hold of her and tried to pull her under; unfortunately try as it might, it would never succeed since Laven could breathe underwater. The Squire, however, was not so fortunate.

When they had finally got to the shore, the half-youma had expected that to be the end of it, for her and the knight to part ways and the two of them never look back or mention what happened. But why then did she come back not once but twice?

Morbid curiosity, perhaps?

Lavendulan honestly wasn’t sure what she wanted right now. At the moment she lacked the drive to fight and she wasn’t entirely in the mood for talking either. It was a strange mood to be in and it left her feeling kind of drained.

“Ugh,” she covered her face with both hands and let out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t like being in this stupid funk…” More than likely it was because she had spent too much of her own energy maintaining a glamour so she could attend the Festival.

Whatever the case may be, she barely reacted when a curious aura began to approach her. Laven had thought, and probably hoped, that it was the same redheaded Squire from before. But when she turned around her mouth fell agape and quickly snapped shut after noticing that her expectations were at least half met. It was in fact a Squire and they did have red hair, but their outfit was definitely different.

“Can I help you?” She finally asked when they were close enough to hear without her having to shout.

Lavendulan looked at the Squire with a supremely unamused expression. “Do I honestly look like I’ve been taking energy from anyone?” She motioned to the area around them which was vacant except for the two of them.

Granted, if he were smart, then he wouldn’t take that statement as a reason to relax.

Just because there wasn’t a body nearby didn’t mean she couldn’t have drained someone elsewhere or had hijacked a starseed and disposed of the body in the reservoir. Let whatever it was that has been dragging people under be the assumed cause of death instead of her. While the former was more likely, the latter was definitely not her style.

“The only thing I’m up to right now is figuring out what tried to kill me a few nights ago.” Not who but what was the keyword there. There was no aura aside from theirs but something had definitely tried to drown both her and the knight she had been with.

"That's essentially what happened to me,"

SSDD... Same s**t different day, her story matched the rest of theirs almost to a "T'. Lavendulan had been trying to swim a different Squire back to shore after having accidentally teleporting them in to the reservoir. Something had grabbed hold of her ankle and without warning pulled her underwater.

"It's definitely magic," of that she had no doubt."Whenever I think I've caught it, whatever it it suddenly disappears; and unfortunately, it doesn't have a signature for me to follow either."

"Trust me, I've been under water long enough tonight to have searched the entire reservoir. There's nothing obvious down there." No tracks to be followed or odd currents suggesting that it was moving around in her peripherals unseen.

Aside from the random trinkets, star charms and pieces of jewelry that people had dropped while swimming, there really wasn't much else down there other than sand and rocks.

"Since there's no telling what is down there, where does that leave us?" Based on their current conversation it seemed that whatever had attacked her was not of senshi make, or knights for that matter. Not unless someone else was using magic and he was just unaware of their involvement.

Lavendulan arched an eyebrow in his direction in response to the Squire's last statement. Neptune knight huh... I guess that explains the trident looking symbols.

"If it's not too forward of me to ask, I am curious. Since you mentioned not being able to breath underwater, what magic can you do?" The other squire could throw up an ice wall with ther use of her buckler. This one, however, didn't appear to have any weapon on him.

Lavendulan simply held up a hand to show off her set of sharp-pointed claws. "Only what natural selection seemed to give me." She added the air quotes when she mentioned natural selection since there was nothing natural about what had happened nor what she had become.

Nonetheless, until he became hostile there was no reason for him to know what other magical quirks she had in her arsenal.