It would have been the natural thing to assume that, upon getting an apprentice, Tio's secret lab would have gotten cleaner. A lot of teachers had their students perform chores as a means of teaching them to respect the hierarchy between them, or just because they had power over them and didn't want to do it themselves. Tio was not above reminding Tasha to respect him nor having her do the dirty jobs he didn't want to himself occasionally, but some things, such as keeping a tidy workplace, just didn't seem important enough to bother doing at all. After all nothing ever left the lab, so what did it matter where exactly in the lab it was? It wasn't exactly a big place, so there wasn't any worry about things getting lost.
Which was why every square inch of the floor in the main room was covered in books; an endless sea of heavy paper volumes about necromancy and every other subject related to it that the pair of them could get their grave-dirty hands on. VonDwight's collection held a vast amount of knowledge on necromancy that was simply too fascinating to pass over, but because of that the search for information regarding the Phoenix Stones kept on stalling every time they came across a new chapter that they just simply couldn't put down.
"Now this looks like it could be interesting." Tio muttered, flipping the page over in the book he was holding. "A method for turning a frog's corpse into a suicide bomber thrall by making it's stomach able to hold a certain mixture of chemicals. This could be quite fun to watch..." He thought about it for a few trills, then a frown slowly began to spread across his face. "... but also kind of disgusting. I mean where's the showmanship in a horde of exploding frogs? Penguins I could get behind, but frogs.... nah, not worth it. Knight to E4."
He clapped the book shut and threw it onto the mess on the floor, took a deep swig from his mug of coffee, and then pushed a white knight across the chessboard set up in the middle of the table. It was Tasha's idea to play casual games of chess during research in order to keep their strategical skills sharp (after all what were thralls if not over-sized chess pieces to push across the board of Idalos?), and so far it seemed to be working pretty well. Tio won more than half the time, owing to more practice at tactics in his job, but Tasha pulled some surprisingly clever moves out of thin air whenever he least expected it.
"Please tell me you've come across something. Because I'm starting to calculate how hard I'd have to hit myself with one of these books in order to knock myself out, and the longer we go without a lead the sweeter and sweeter oblivion starts to sound." He grumbled, leafing through the pile of currently unread books for anything that sounded interesting.
Which was why every square inch of the floor in the main room was covered in books; an endless sea of heavy paper volumes about necromancy and every other subject related to it that the pair of them could get their grave-dirty hands on. VonDwight's collection held a vast amount of knowledge on necromancy that was simply too fascinating to pass over, but because of that the search for information regarding the Phoenix Stones kept on stalling every time they came across a new chapter that they just simply couldn't put down.
"Now this looks like it could be interesting." Tio muttered, flipping the page over in the book he was holding. "A method for turning a frog's corpse into a suicide bomber thrall by making it's stomach able to hold a certain mixture of chemicals. This could be quite fun to watch..." He thought about it for a few trills, then a frown slowly began to spread across his face. "... but also kind of disgusting. I mean where's the showmanship in a horde of exploding frogs? Penguins I could get behind, but frogs.... nah, not worth it. Knight to E4."
He clapped the book shut and threw it onto the mess on the floor, took a deep swig from his mug of coffee, and then pushed a white knight across the chessboard set up in the middle of the table. It was Tasha's idea to play casual games of chess during research in order to keep their strategical skills sharp (after all what were thralls if not over-sized chess pieces to push across the board of Idalos?), and so far it seemed to be working pretty well. Tio won more than half the time, owing to more practice at tactics in his job, but Tasha pulled some surprisingly clever moves out of thin air whenever he least expected it.
"Please tell me you've come across something. Because I'm starting to calculate how hard I'd have to hit myself with one of these books in order to knock myself out, and the longer we go without a lead the sweeter and sweeter oblivion starts to sound." He grumbled, leafing through the pile of currently unread books for anything that sounded interesting.
