Room 227, Tuesday Afternoon

[thatsmysword]

Henry still wasn't certain that he wasn't dead.

He'd spent the past week and a half just... going along with whatever was happening here. He didn't know what else to do. He listened to people explain things he barely understood, and he went rummaging around to complete assignments that made no sense, and...

And he was here.

In a bed so soft he wasn't sure what it was made of, staring at the ceiling with the door open, thinking about death. And life. And which one of those he was currently involved in.

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[even_bigger_teeth]

Luma lived all the way at the other end of the hall, and it was so quiet in these dorms that she figured they were pretty sparsely populated. But every so often, she'd catch a whiff of someone while she was in the hallway, and curiosity had her following it, usually to a closed door. So when this time it lead her to an open one, she sort of a blinked for a moment, considered the distance between this door and her own, and then let out a huff.

"So there is someone down here," she commented, from where she'd peeked in from the open door.

[thatsmysword]

"... Am I?" Henry asked, startling from his thoughts. "Down here?"

In his defense, he was still thinking about death and dying.

[even_bigger_teeth]

"From where I'm standing," Luma answered back, "you seem to be. And you smell too real to be an illusion or a figment of my imagination."

[thatsmysword]

"I could be dead," Henry said, sitting up. "And 'here' could be Hell. People keep telling me it isn't, but..."

[even_bigger_teeth]

"I always heard Hell was supposed to have a lot more fire and brimstone," Luma offered, and she breathed in again, and paid very close attention now, specifically to Henry's neck, to suss out his pulse and listen for a heartbeat.

"You don't seem very dead to me," she decided. "What makes you think you might be?"

[thatsmysword]

Henry, regular human boy that he was, had a regular human boy pulse and a regular human boy heartbeat. "It's just strange, is all," he said. "One moment I'm fast asleep in my cot in Rattay, the next I wake up on the lawn and people are telling me all sorts of tales about water that magically appears inside houses and something about catching lightning and using it for things?"

[even_bigger_teeth]

"Oh," Luma said, with a certain knowledgeable loftiness that went along with learning something and then immediately being able to apply it, "Mr. Sims said yesterday that some people end up here without expecting to. You're probably one of those people. If you were in a cot without plumbing or electricity," she was assuming that was what he meant, anyway, "it sounds like an improvement, at least."

[thatsmysword]

"Honestly wouldn't have known the difference until a few days ago," Henry admitted. "If the ones who told me I wasn't dead are to be believed, I'm a bit-- time-challenged, if you get my meaning."

[even_bigger_teeth]

"I do," Luma said, almost smiling brightly over that fact but catching herself before she ended up giving him just a grin full of sharp teeth. "I'm apparently nearly 50 years in the future right now."

[thatsmysword]

"Six hundred years or so, meself," Henry offered. "So you've got plenty of time on me."

[even_bigger_teeth]

"So I'm winding up blown away by cell phones and take-out menues," which, to be fair, had more to do with her upbringing than her time period, "and you're ending up blown away by...well, everything, probably! That's even further back than Miss Lydia!"

[thatsmysword]

"I don't even know how they get the water to come all the way up here," Henry said, with an easy shrug, and-- "Do you know how they do that?"

Please don't let him know you know anything about anything, Luma. You'll never be rid of him.

[even_bigger_teeth]

Luma shrugged back, just as easily.

"Besides the pipes?" she asked. "Some sort of reservoir, probably, I think that's what they have at home. Surely, they had Wells in the 1400s?"

Please don't think Luma knew anything about anything, Henry, for your own sake. Unless it was maybe hunting rabbits.

[thatsmysword]

"Aye, outside, yes," Henry said. He pointed past her into the hallway. "But there's a bit of metal in there where if you twist it, the water just comes out. Are you saying they have a well that high? Inside?"

[even_bigger_teeth]

"Oh!" said Luma. "You mean thr faucets! Oh, that's where pipes come in, there's all sorts of bits of metal that work through the walls to carry the water to all the faucets. Very annoying when one breaks and it can damage a whole room if you're not careful, but they're very important."

Said with the confidence of someone who had to deal with hiring someone to fix some pipes recently. She despised the whole experience, but at least now something helpful was coming from it!

[thatsmysword]

"The pipes carry the water up?" Henry asked. "That's quite a feat!"

Spoken like a man who, in another timeline, would be confused by a fountain being right in the middle of Kuttenberg several times in a row.

[even_bigger_teeth]

"I think it has something to do with pressure?" Luma said, then gave another shrug. That sort of thing hadn't factored into much of her tutoring, to be honest. "I think it's a bit like the Roman's and their aquaducts, but I don't really know much about it. I'm sure someone here could tell you more about it, though, if you really wanted to know."

It sounded pretty boring if you asked her, though.

[thatsmysword]

Not to Henry. "Right, but not you," he said easily. "Ah, I'm Henry, by the way. I think I've seen you about?"

[even_bigger_teeth]

"Very much not me," Luma agreed emphatically, with a shake of her head and a dismissively snort.

"And I'm Luma," she offered back, "Zarrin. And possibly. I just started here, I live down the hall, with my sister Eleanor."

[thatsmysword]

"Must be useful, having a sister around," Henry offered. "At least you have something that feels familiar."

[napking]

Gray had almost been back to room 239 after his class. He'd almost made it!

And then Sloth had kicked in and he'd fallen asleep in a heap just outside of someone else's door for about ten minutes before bestirring himself and looking around in confusion. "Wha? Huh?"

[thatsmysword]

At least Henry had sat up by now, which meant he had the opportunity to blink, and then get up, and go to the door. He leaned against said door, still blinking, and said, "Sorry, did someone knock you over the head? Are you all right?"

[napking]

"I'm fine," Gray assured him as he pushed himself to his feet. "Just a little bit cursed, is all."

[thatsmysword]

"Oh." Henry's frown deepened. "Like by a witch, or something?"

[napking]

"Oh, no," Gray protested. "Most witches are very nice people. Probably." He couldn't speak for Regency Girl or the hot guy who lived in the woods personally. "I was cursed by the Supreme Being. It's a whole thing with a prophecy and stuff." You know. Normal Fandom things.

[thatsmysword]

"Ah."

Those eyebrows sure were making some movement.

"So... you think you're cursed by God, you mean?" he said. "What did you do?"

[napking]

"I didn't do anything," Gray, who was definitely cursed by God, sighed. "My dad did. It's a whole..." He waved a hand vaguely. "Thing. Have you heard of Lucifer? Not--not the guy in town with the bar. Actually, yes him, but he's from another universe so..." Right. Medieval. Probably Christian. "You know what? Don't worry about it. You're new, right? I'm Gray. I live down the hall." He gestured toward his door. "In 239."

[thatsmysword]

Sorry, Gray, he hadn't registered anything beyond-- "... Lucifer has a tavern in town?" Henry said. "I-- are you sure you didn't get hit in the head just now?"

[napking]

"Maybe?" Gray shrugged. "I was out before I hit the ground, so I dunno. But a Lucifer really does have a bar in town. Or he works there and the hot vampire owns it." Gray was unclear on that whole deal.

[thatsmysword]

At this point even Eric and Lucifer themselves didn't know, and just behaved according to whatever they felt was true at the time.

"So you're saying Lucifer works at a bar run by a vampire?" Yes, that was a helpful dose of skepticism in Henry's voice. "That doesn't seem too likely."

[napking]

"Right? He's supposed to be in a cage somewhere between the veils. Well. Our Lucifer, anyway. This is a different Lucifer. I totally can't see my world's Lucifer ever working for a vampire." Or...whatever was going on there.

Gray was probably not helping with that whole suspicion that Henry was dead, huh?

[thatsmysword]

"So we are in Hell," Henry surmised, agreeing with the narrative. "May the Lord have mercy."

He made a reflexive sign of the cross. He didn't sound too panicked, though. Mostly resigned.

Everything had felt like Hell since Skalitz burned. Might as well make it official.

[napking]

"No, we're not." Gray rolled his eyes. "Hell looks super different, trust me. I lived there until I was eight. There aren't even any demons here! This is--I mean, it's an interdimensional nexus point, sure, but it's squarely in the human realm."

Also the Supreme Being was very much not big on mercy, but humans tended to not like hearing that, so Gray wasn't going to burst Henry's bubble on that count.

[thatsmysword]

"... An in-tur-dee-munch-nal ness-us point?" Henry said slowly. "What's that?"

Well, at least it wasn't a name he was mangling this time.