Why was it that building contractors took such an inordinate amount of time to accomplish a task that I would have been able to accomplish in less than half the time? When I had hired them to rebuild my apartment to the standards of the building manager, I had offered them a certain sum of money that they had ungratefully proclaimed wasn't enough to cover their time for the length of the task. Unamused with the attitudes of the contractors but mildly humored with the idea of a challenge, I offered them double the original sum if they could get the task done in a few days instead of the timeline they had given me. When they looked eager and greedy at the number of zeros, I knew they wouldn't be able to manage what I'd asked. Without genuine perseverance or determination or whatever it was that encouraged people to do an ungodly amount of work in a given period of time, those contractors would never have made my deadlines. So, with that in mind, I had happily fired them without realizing that meant I needed consecutive days to fix the apartment myself. That meant no work, no shop, no extra-curricular work...

Basically, it meant I needed to take a sabbatical from life.

Between rebuilding my apartment, working the various jobs I held... there was little time for anything else which meant I had acquired no other place of residence besides the suite Rowena had so graciously allowed Church and I to inhabit during my leave of absence from the particular apartment in need of repairs. Surely I could have stayed at the estate outside of the city, though that would have been even more problematic for me to attempt to fix the apartment considering the time and effort and even the distance I would need to cover in order to participate in what was normal life for me. Normalcy aside, I didn't quite detest the Witchery, and with the privacy the blessed witch (ha, get it?) who owned the building afforded me, I was perfectly content with my circumstance until I had enough time to finish un...condemning my apartment.

Though particularly uneventful for the length of my stay so far, the Witchery seemed abundant with foul energy that felt incredibly abrasive as I opened the door of the suite I had been staying in, in order to gauge what the disturbance I'd noticed occurring floors beneath was. The hallway was scantily populated save for a stout maid, dressed in an expression that would insinuate some kind of explicit horror floors below where we stood. She offered no inkling of what might be occurring until she had traversed across the hallway to allow me a close-up of her frightened expression, wrought with wide eyes that were far-too big for her face and pale skin, reminiscent of someone who had recently seen a ghost. Oh wait! I'd seen that look recently, and with the narrowing of my own eyes in consequence of that notion that perhaps there was a ghost floating around another nasty little thought replaced the initial displeasure of assuming a ghost was around: was Serafina here? And why? "Hunters", the maid hissed, not even pausing to say the word and merely expressing the nature of the hullabaloo in passing, clearly headed towards whatever exit might allow her safety. Okay, maybe not ghosts, but... What was worse? If there were more than one hunter, the incident was likely to have been planned; likely to have been planned at a time when there would be others on the Council's list to eliminate. Had I made truths out of Azrael's words and put Serafina into danger? Better yet... Maybe the blonde hunter I outwardly detested would be in the building somewhere, and he would make it so that an escape might even be possible, let alone probable. I was sure he wouldn't harm Serafina, especially after his display of affection in his initial... playdate with me. Then again... Perhaps the assumptions were better left for a time when I was sure of exactly what we, as individuals in the building, might face.

Begrudgingly I seized the door shut behind me as if I was locking away whatever bit of peace I might have found in sleep in that very suite. There was something more important surely at stake somewhere, though, and it gave me every reason to investigate the maid's claims. I had immediately found myself worrying about Serafina, but as I began to hear telltale voices of the hunters the maid mentioned, it struck me that they were more likely than not here for a particular blonde witch... It was unlikely that Rowena would need or want my help but Azrael had let me in on the "secret" that the Council had noticed my activity as a warlock in the city and I was on their radar. My appearance would give them both a run for their money, and a reason to diver their attention from Rowena. Heading down the hallway, I found myself growing more and more agitated as there was nothing to give me any sign of what might have occurred; only the melodious sound of a voice that had become all too familiar emanating from what seemed like it was Rowena's office just down the stairs. As I descended the staircase that spiraled behind the offices, it was both minutely comforting and insanely unnerving to see Rowena's office door open, void of both the impressively strong blonde witch and the source of the voice I had heard â€" Serafina wasn't there, either. There would have been, positively, a ruckus if Rowena had been put into true danger, of that I was sure and so without a second thought, I continued to make my way down to the source of the noise and the maid's worry.

That was, until a welcomed darkness began to eat any visibility either myself or the Hunters might have had in the corridor.; in that precise moment, my Shadow spun alive, flitting into the darkness to use as a shield in order to understand just what lay waiting. And me? I felt a gentle, invigorating buzz begin to boil the blood in my veins and ignite a magical response that I adored yielding. With a perverse crack of my knuckles and a gentle flourish of my fingers, I could feel the empty bodies void of life within the floor and wall react with a twitch, beginning to burrow methodically through the wall in a small, protected hole that then allowed them to trickle out, dispersing with a speed that I was mildly impressed with. Enjoying the feel of the darkness, I stayed quiet to allow the horde of the reanimated carcasses disperse over the floor and the walls. While finding the bodies hadn't been difficult, there weren't nearly enough to make the setting as grotesque as I had pictured it... and with that in mind, my other hand became used to twiddle my fingers in an effort to create a duplicate of the horde of vermin to weave an illusion of more swarming the body of the hunter that had been caught in the darkness. I had heard her voice â€" I knew it, from somewhere. What was it, Katherine? Kat...? I had heard the words from Azrael before, and with a renewed interested I expelled what breath I had been holding and the vermin energized. Bodies of once-dead, hideous cockroaches scuttled across the walls at an audible pitch before fluttering onto the hunter with verve. The maggots that poured out of the ceiling would land on her, and the hundreds of legs of the undead centipedes would be tangible to her. Sure enough, she would be incapacitated briefly though I would happily be ready for whatever fight she'd offer.

Allowing several of the roaches to escape, one would tote with it the very essence of my magic. It was, in fact, an illusion that would scurry through the halls in order to find Azrael and promptly disappear as if alerting him that I was, in fact, present and had no intention of standing down like he had demanded I do â€" to lay low, to keep quiet.

On this one? Consider the sabbatical over.

"Consider that complimentary service."