A Queen and Her Kings

Mysterious Patrons and Leaky Roofs

Cassandra stared at her, her familiar's, and her Court's new residence. It was an old, rickety looking mansion with boarded and broken windows and holes in the ceiling. The gate they had passed through to get here was all bent up and one of the lights that was supposed to be on one of the stone gate posts was missing. The landscaping wasn't much better. The grass on the surrounding area was brown and dead looking, something seven of the eight could see in the dark due to their supernatural eyesight. The trees all looked dead with their lack of leaves and cobwebs in their branches, and the concrete stair ways leading to the dorm were cracked and jagged. In short, the place looked barely habitable.

Yue looked on in disgust, "He wants to kill us. That crazy bird man wants to kill us. He wants us to be stupid enough to sleep in there, have the building collapse in on us and claim some kind of student insurance policy. That is the only possible reason he could have ever thought to send us here.", he said in a far off tone, he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Ash looked on with a similar, but less dramatic expression, "That or he's stupid enough to think that people living in there is at all safe or legal. I say we cut off Shorter's arm, say a piece of falling debri did it and we sue so we can have the money to build our own structurally sound dorm", he said as he crossed his arms.

Shorter looked at his friend affronted, "Why do I have to cut off my arm?!", he exclaimed.

Cassandra sighed, "Quiet, all of you. No one is severing anyone's arm. It's late, it's been a very weird, very long day and while the reality of this situation hasn't hit us just yet, it will eventually. We need food and sleep, especially Grim and Skip. I agree with Yue when I say that the dorm looks ready to collapse in on itself, but right now it's all we've got. We can talk about how we're going to fix it in the morning. Let's just head inside and clean up a little for now though. Does that sound agreeable?", Cassandra stated as she turned to face everyone with Grim sleeping in her arms while she carried him like a baby.

Eiji put his hands on his hips, "Speaking of food, where are we going to get our blood? There doesn't seem to be any sort of hospital around here. We need to eat, Cassie.", Eiji said, concerned.

Cassandra looked towards him and nodded, "And we will, birdy. This is a boarding school, meaning there is most likely an infirmary around here somewhere with medical blood on standby. We'll just nick the stuff that's expired for medical use and drink that.", she resolved.

Eiji nodded, "Alright.", he said, trusting his lover's judgment.

Cassandra looked down as she felt someone tugging on her sleeve, and looked down to see a very tired Skip rubbing his eyes. It was easy to forget Skip was only twelve, not to mention human sometimes, given he always took everything that she and the others did at least semi-maturly.

"'M tired, Cas.", he said, speech slurred due to exhaustion.

Cassandra knelt down to his level and looked at him softly, smiling tiredly, "You can go to bed soon, Skip. We just have to clean up a bit first. The minute we dust off one of the beds, you can use it, okay?" she said to him softly.

Skipper nodded and started in the direction of the dorm, with everyone else following suit. Griffin opened the door and everyone walked into the dorm's mud room, which was, to the surprise of no one, covered in so much dust that it looked like snow. Treading lightly as to avoid falling over fallen objects, everyone made their way to the living area. Which, contrary to its name, was not very livable. The striped furniture was ripped up and old, the wallpaper was peeling off, the pictures were crooked, and the fireplace was filled with cobwebs.

"This place is the pits. Do we even have heat? Electricity? Water?", said Shorter as he picked up a pillow off one of the couches, dropped it, and coughed as the dust off of it and the ground filled the air. With some of the dust off the couch, Skip flopped onto it stomach first and immediately fell asleep, much to the concern of Griffin and Eiji who thought he would have trouble breathing due to all the dust if he slept there.