Liliana's Office, Thursday

[deathsmajesty]

Even with only a fraction of the simulation she'd had planned, Liliana thought the class had gone well and was quite pleased with how everything had turned out. Perhaps she'd teach a class on the Ravnican Guilds and use that simulation again some day.

She'd brought the elven lyre to the school, figuring she could stop by the shop after classes to place it back in the window. Even though it wasn't a harp proper, it felt more like the ones she'd grown up with than the large standing harp she'd used in class yesterday. Perhaps the aesthetic, perhaps something as simple as the size. Her mother had used a standing harp when she played, but Liliana and Allegra had been taught on lap harps growing up.

Idly she began to play again, something easy and slow, looking over her notes for next week when they would - sadly - leave zombies behind and start discussing vampires. What should she do for a capstone on that section? Perhaps a real trip to Innistrad to talk to Olivia Voldaren or Runo Stromkirk? Hmm, probably not. She couldn't run the risk of an overzealous fledgling eating one of her students. Maybe she could invite Sorin Markov to give a lecture. That idea made her laugh out loud. Perhaps Eric?

...She was studiously ignoring the existence of the other vampire on the island. She would talk to Sorin Markov for a full day before she'd allow that one to come talk in her classroom.

Comments

[chef_chocobro]

There was the slightest of hesitations, because he knew that 'Ignis states the obvious' was not a feature that had turned out in his benefit, in the past, but at least this might at least open up some perspective to the conundrum at hand, perhaps...

"Have you considered Eric at all?" he asked, and then his head tilted as he mused along this line of thought a little further. "And I trust your friend Olivia has also been dismissed. I can only imagine her...intensity," yes, he'd only met the woman once, but she'd left quite an impression, and not the ones he'd suspected she'd have liked to have left on him, "would be difficult to rein in in this particular setting..."

[deathsmajesty]

And, indeed, Liliana did deliver him a tart look because obviously she had considered Eric, but that wasn't the point of the minigame thought exercise. That was to pin down how much she disliked that other vampire, but weighing her existence against other people she disliked. Intensely.

It was good to have a precise accounting of where people existed on your hate-o-meter. Then you knew in which order to sacrifice them should the need arise.

Still, tart look aside, her answer was fangless. "And if I decide that I do want a vampire to come in and lead the capstone class, Eric would be my choice," she said. "I considered Olivia - and Runo, of course - but neither of them are Planeswalkers, so I would have to bring the class to Innistrad--" She bet he loved that idea, "--or program them into the Danger Shop, in which case they would simply be parroting my words back to the class and I could have saved us all the trouble of saying them directly."

[chef_chocobro]

There was a frown and a grunt to bolster that Liliana's assumption on whar he thought of the idea of a field trip was, indeed, correct.

"And while carting the entire class off to Innistrad would no doubt be highly educational," he drawled, "it would be the very textbook definition of 'a liability.'"

[deathsmajesty]

"And they can't know about planar portals," Liliana said. "No one from my Multiverse can know. I'm almost certain that knowledge is precisely why Nicol Bolas sent me here. He doesn't need me to run this tiny outpost shop in the middle of nowhere. Even if I sold every bit of merchandise as I got it in, he wouldn't even notice."

He was something like thirty-thousand years old. That was a lot of time for a dragon to accumulate a horde.

"But access to the only working planar portal in the Multiverse? The value for that would be incalculable, and so is the damage he could cause."

And this, kids, is what we call 'dramatic irony.' Thanks Rashmi.