Scalvoris Campus
3rd Saun, 717
3rd Saun, 717
Tio had never been the scholarly type. He simply wasn't the kind of person who could stand to sit at a desk for long periods of time and listen to somebody waffle on and on, he was too naturally impatient. Considering that, he'd never expected that one day he'd sign up to study at the Scalvoris branch of the Viden Academy, after all spending money so that he could willingly go and sit behind a stuffy desk all day seemed like the antithesis to his nature, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
The simple fact was that his skill at magic wasn't improving, and no amount of practice on his usual thralls seemed to be helping. Zavious had only taught him the bare basics about magic and necromancy before his initiation and subsequent abandonment, and so although the spark burned comfortably in his soul Tio lacked the knowledge to properly use it. His necromancy as it was now was shallow, nothing more than a flashy kind of puppetry, and playing around with strings wasn't changing that. If he wanted to grow he needed teaching, and a necromancy teacher wasn't exactly easy to find.
So if nobody else could teach him he'd just have to teach himself! The Viden Academy held knowledge of all kinds, magic included, and so with access to their knowledge and a quiet place to work Tio was sure that he could unlock the higher levels of necromancy of his own. Unfortunately the only way to get to that knowledge was to sign up as a student, and despite Scalvoris' generally laid back attitude to it Tio didn't want to reveal himself as a necromancer, so in order to be granted entry to the Metaphysics department Tio had enrolled to study a more socially accepted form of magic, Alchemy, under the guise of his Eidisi form alias Taelis Selvar.
Learning Alchemy seemed like a fine idea to Tio; after all it could teach him about the basics of magic just as well as any Discipline magic could, and he could potentially even apply it to his necromancy to create other effects. Unfortunately as the very first lecture had proven to him most of the coursework on the subject offered by the academy was just sitting around taking notes on a boring lecture, and it hadn't taken him very long at all to decide to just skip all the lectures and spend his time on the the more fun part; the practical side. It was well within his rights to do so; he was paying for the course after all, and was under no obligation to attend lectures he didn't feel like going to so long as he was able to keep up with them in his own way. The tuition fees included access to lab space and common reagents, so Tio spent most of his time in one of the student labs trying to perform easy alchemy on his own.
The results had been... volatile. Out of his six experiments so far three had ended in explosions of varying calibre, one had created a thick smoke that had left a sharp smell clinging to the laboratory, and one had made some sort of stew-like substance that tasted fairly nice but seemed to be poisonous in high doses. They were fairly impressive reactions, except that none of them had been anything like the reaction he'd been intending to make! Indeed it was a bit of a mystery how he'd been able to create explosions at all considering the reagents he used were only a cut above cooking ingredients.
After his string of solo experiments quite a few Alchemy professors had tried to teach him the proper way to do basic Alchemy, more out of fear of the structural damage he may end up causing the academy one day than anything else, but none had succeeded. It seemed that he was somehow completely unteachable, because at some point during the Alchemy processes that no-one could quite identify something ended up going terribly wrong and creating horrible results. It was almost fascinating how badly wrong things could go, as if alchemy itself had an issue with him.
Which was why Tio now found himself outside the staff offices of the science department. Apparently one of the physics teachers was not just an incredible alchemist but a great chemist as well, and therefor might be able to stop whatever disastrous reactions he was accidentally triggering. Tio knocked firmly on the door, stepping in only when he was called for and fixing the occupants of the room with a bright smile.
"Hi there, I'm looking for Professor Augustin. Is he around?"
